


Fortune Favors Fools / Sleeping on the Job

by Frea_O



Series: The Fatesverse [4]
Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-30
Updated: 2011-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-28 12:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 47,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah Walker races across continents and risks life, limb, and job security for a man she's only met once...but has never forgotten. Combined with the short story <i>Sleeping on the Job</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. As Constant as the Northern Star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am constant as the northern star,  
> Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality  
> There is no fellow in the firmament.  
> — William Shakespeare, **Julius Caesar, III, i, 60-62**

**25 SEPTEMBER 2007  
SARAH’S APARTMENT  
00:14 EDT**

Even though it was supposed to be her day off, which meant no distractions, no cell phones, and definitely no CI-Freaking-A, Sarah’s cell phone rang. Loudly. Uncomfortably close to her head. And, of course, at the worst possible moment of her sleep cycle. She dragged herself from REM sleep to wakefulness while “Jazzy Jive Ringtone #4” blared. Years of training and the necessity to be alert at the drop of a hat kept her from snapping, “What!” into the phone, though she was tempted.

Instead, she said, “Walker, secure.”

“Sarah?” The nervous voice on the other end of the line was familiar, though she hadn’t heard it as often in the past two years, not since she and Bryce had been transferred. But even fighting off the effects of deep sleep, Sarah could recognize Dave O’Connor on the other end of the line. “Sarah, what the hell is going on?”

Sarah pushed her sleep mask off and swung her legs out of bed. “What are you talking about?”

“What the _hell_ are you and Bryce trying to pull? Please tell me this is sanctioned because if not, Sarah, I don’t know if I should even be talking to you. I’ve got kids.”

Instantly, everything inside Sarah went cold. Bryce called it agent mode taking over, though she didn’t really have an official term for it. She pushed all of her confusion and sleepiness to the side. “I haven’t seen Bryce since we met for drinks earlier tonight,” she said in as succinct a voice as possible. “And he left early. Is he in trouble?”

“I should say so! He blew up government property. You had nothing to do with this?”

“You woke me up, Dave.” Sarah’s mind whirled through thousands of possibilities, scenarios, and statistics, even as the rest of her wondered, what the hell? Why on earth would Bryce ever blow up government property? And why hadn’t he told her about it? “Tell me what happened.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I don’t know if I should,” Dave said, and she wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t believe her or if there was something more going on.

“Dave.”

“Sarah, this is huge.” Dave sounded genuinely frightened, which made Sarah’s hand pause in the closet as she reached for a shirt. “If Bryce was acting of his own volition, and we don’t report this right away…it could be terrorism, and they don’t—they don’t negotiate with terrorists—”

“Dave,” Sarah said, and her voice sounded calm and level even though her thoughts were whirling, attempting to put _any_ info into any semblance of understandable order. Terrorism? What the hell? She hadn’t been asleep that long. “You’re on a secure line. This conversation stays between you and me. You’ve got that promise from me and you know I’m a woman of my word. But you have _got_ to tell me what’s going on.”

“Bryce blew up part of the DNI.” The words tumbled out in a rush.

“ _What_? Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know! I thought you might, which is why I called you before my superiors. You really had nothing to do with this?”

Sarah was tempted to point out that she stabbed things: arson wasn’t usually her first priority. “I swear I had nothing to do with this. What exactly did Bryce blow up?”

“It’s classified level six.”

Oh shit. Bryce, Sarah thought, what have you done?

And _why_?

“I didn’t look into the details of the room, Sarah. I’m not sure I want to know. But whatever it was…he had to subdue at least twenty guards. They’re thinking he might have gotten clipped, and the NSA is furious.”

“The NSA is involved?” It was getting worse with every sentence Dave spoke. Sarah shucked out of her negligee and began wiggling into clothes. It looked like sleep was about to become a rare and precious commodity. Every minute Bryce remained off the grid increased the suspicion that he really _had_ committed treason. As much as that word sent frozen terror through her, the agent part of Sarah never backed down from the hard truth.

But it didn’t make _sense_. Had Bryce gone temporarily insane?

“Oh yeah,” Dave said. “Whatever was in that room, it was joint NSA and CIA, and it was important. Bryce hasn’t contacted you?”

Sarah pulled her phone away from her ear to check. No new messages. “Not in the usual manner,” she said. “He hasn’t tried to contact you?”

“No, no, not at all, but I monitor the email usage, you know, make sure there are no aberrations, and about five minutes after the explosion, an unregistered account on the server sent a huge file.”

“What?”

“I think it was Bryce, Sarah. I think he blew up whatever was in that room and he emailed it to somebody.”

“That’s a lot to pin on somebody, Dave.”

“Check your computer.”

She slung a pair of slacks over her shoulder to put on later, grabbed her flat-heeled boots, and hurried downstairs to her computer, juggling everything as she did so. “Okay,” she said, dumping the load she’d picked up on her desk chair. “I’m at my computer, what did you want me to—” She broke off as her computer started playing grainy surveillance footage on its own, which was mildly creepy.

Of course, she forgot all about that after only a few seconds of the footage. It told a grim tale: Bryce Larkin using parkour and other gymnastics to take out one guard after the next. He was wearing the same damned suit he’d worn to meet her and Carina—though she was going by Callie right now—for drinks.

No wonder, Sarah thought as on-screen Bryce karate-chopped a guard down and vaulted over a rail, he wanted to leave early. And she’d thought he just wanted to get away from Carina.

“What’s going on right now?” Sarah asked, watching with a calculating eye as Bryce continued to twist and dance his way through the guards. “Have they organized a manhunt yet?”

“Everybody’s in a panic. The bureaucrats got involved and it’s a regular SNAFU right now.” Dave’s voice now sounded ragged. “They haven’t even called me yet. I should have called straight in, I know I should have…”

“You did the right thing, Dave,” Sarah said, forcing as much calmness into her voice as she could. Dave made for great tech support, but she would never have wanted to serve in the field with him. “How long ago did this happen?”

“The email was sent forty-five minutes ago.”

“And that was after the explosion?”

“Yes, three minutes after.”

Which meant Bryce had nearly an hour of lead time, and that time would only grow as Sarah and Dave worked to piece together precisely what had happened. Sarah dumped everything out of her chair and sat down at her computer, intending to get a better look at the footage. She knew she should report in to Graham and see what he wanted her to do, but…Bryce was her partner. Even if he looked guiltier than sin at the moment, she had to give him the benefit of the doubt, right?

Right?

“I’m going to need you to hack into all traffic cameras around the DNI, and see if we can figure out how he left. If he got injured, he’ll go to ground; he knows first aid knowledge to sew himself up. If we act quickly, we might catch him before he can remove any sign of his—”

“Sarah.” Dave’s voice was solemn now.

Sarah felt a tendril of ice curl through her belly. “What? What is it?”

“You never asked who the email went to.”

She’d been more focused on wondering why the hell Bryce had evidently snapped, lost all touch with reality, and blown up a building, but if he had an accomplice—an accomplice that wasn’t her, which hurt, but that whole mess of psychoses and emotion would have to be explored later, when she once again had the luxury of time—that was important. And there was something in Dave’s voice that made her leery. “Please tell me he didn’t send it to Al-Qaeda, Dave. I’m already starting to regret waking up.”

“Not Al-Qaeda, no.” There was a pause on the other end of the phone line for so long that Sarah nearly threatened to take away Dave’s extensive movie collection. Dramatic pauses were well and good and all, but not when her partner was evidently a fugitive on the run after blowing up a damned piece of government property. “He sent it to Chuck, Sarah.”

Sarah didn’t drop the phone, though it was a near thing. “Say what?” she asked, though she had heard perfectly.

Chuck.

Damn it.

“The email transmission went straight to Bunker Seven-Seven-One-Four-Two-One-Three-Five. I logged the IP address and triple-checked.” This time the pause wasn’t dramatic, or maybe Sarah didn’t hear it thanks to the fact that every single part of her had gone numb. She physically felt the color leach from the room. “I don’t know what the hell Bryce’s game is, Sarah, but it looks like Chuck’s in on it.”

No. That was impossible. Chuck wasn’t a traitor. He cared enough for the country that he was willing to put up with the worst godforsaken assignment. There was no way he would willingly aid and abet the destruction of government property.

Sarah forced herself to swallow. “I see,” she said. If having to deal with the thought that Bryce may have gone rogue had made her cold, hearing that Chuck might have been in on it was something much, much worse. Sub-zero didn’t come close.

It took a mammoth effort, but she forced the daze to the back of her mind, Agent Walker taking over in place of Sarah’s shock. “Is there any way to know what was in the email Bryce sent Chuck?”

“I can try to find out,” Dave said.

“Good. Do that.” Sarah rose, pushing away from the computer, and headed back upstairs. She had a strong suspicion that she knew where Bryce might be heading, and if she moved quickly, she could intercept him. And she would need a lot warmer clothing. “Dave, do you trust me?”

“What?”

“Do you trust me?” Sarah took her stairs two at a time.

“I don’t—”

“Do you or don’t you?”

“I do,” Dave said after a pause. “But Sarah, this is terrorism, and this is _huge_.”

“I know that, but we don’t have any way to know this wasn’t sanctioned. Unfortunately, we work for the Central Intelligence Agency, and it’s an occupational hazard.” Sarah yanked open her closet and this time reached all the way to the back, removing the panel she had installed the first week she had moved in. There was a packed bag inside. “I need a favor.”

“What? What is it?” Fear laced Dave’s voice.

“I need you to sit on that email.”

“ _What_? Sarah, that’s—that’s—that could get me fired! Hell, that could get me thrown in jail!”

“I’ll take the fall if there’s any heat,” Sarah said, tossing the bag on the bed before she keyed in the combination to the safe where she kept her back-up piece. “I don’t know what Bryce and,” she paused just the slightest bit before saying _his_ name aloud, “Chuck, I don’t know what they’re doing, but I’m going to have faith that they’re not traitors and they’re not terrorists. And I want you to do the same.”

“But what if…”

“Then I’ll deal with it. I’ll be out of contact for at least ten hours, but you should be able to reach me for a little while on this number.” Sarah rattled off the back-up cell phone number she had memorized six months before. “Follow your normal protocol, but don’t mention the email or Chuck to anybody for twenty-four hours. And send everything you can find out on that email to that number I gave you. Got it?”

“You had better not burn me,” Dave said, suddenly fierce.

Despite the anxious fear, Sarah allowed a sad smile. One of the realities of being a spy was that anybody and everybody could be burned in the right situation, and Dave was one of four people where she hoped that situation _never_ arose. Unfortunately, Bryce and Chuck made up for two of the others, so it didn’t feel like she was going to get her wish in this situation.

“I will do everything I can to protect you, Dave, and I will keep your family safe.”

“Twenty-four hours,” Dave said.

Sarah thanked him. Normally she would have asked him to tell the girls hello for her, but right now, that might sound like a threat, so she just bade him good-bye. Time was of the essence, she knew, but she stood at her bedside for a moment after she’d hung up, and stared at her own bedroom. For one minute—time she didn’t have—she let herself, as she had heard Chuck put it once, freak out. Sixty seconds to hyperventilate and wonder what the _hell_ had just happened.

And then she took a deep breath and released the magazine from her gun to check for ammunition. It was loaded.

She shoved the magazine back in and took a deep breath before she tucked the gun at the small of her back. Normally, the weight was somewhat comforting, but right now, it felt like the ball at the end of the chain that would drag her to her drowning death.

She could only hope she didn’t have to use it on her partner. And she feared that she would have to, on the man that had refused to leave her thoughts over the past two years.

Once she’d pulled on pants and shoes and ran a comb through her hair, she picked up her cell phone from the bed and dialed a number from memory. A couple of ring-tones later, an irate voice picked up. “Hey, Mitch,” Sarah said, putting false cheer in her voice. “You’re in DC, right? Oh, good. Remember Guatemala? Yeah, I’m calling in that favor. How soon can you get to Dulles?”

 **25 SEPTEMBER 2007  
DOMODEDOVO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT  
20:52 MSD**

“ _Au Revoir_ ,” Sarah said into the first burn phone, and hung up. Even though Jean-Paul was one of her favorite contacts, she longed to put her hand to her forehead for even a brief moment, to try and quell the vicious headache that had been sitting behind her right eyeball. She knew better. Very soon, the CIA would obtain copies of the surveillance footage from the airport in Moscow. And Sarah did not want to show them what she truly was: a woman about two wrong words from shattering into a thousand pieces. So instead she would give them the calm façade that she had worked hard to craft when she had been handed the Sarah Walker name.

Samantha wanted to curl up and cry. Sarah, likewise, wanted a nap, but that wasn’t on the agenda, so she might as well suck it up.

She pocketed her cell phone and rose, collecting her bag. She had thirty minutes until she was supposed to meet her contact. It was best to eat while she could, though her stomach seemed to curl inward at even the merest thought of food.

It figured. It was hard to stomach the thought of eating when both of your partners looked like they had gone behind your back and committed a major act of treason and terrorism.

Dave had sent the promised data. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the file Bryce had emailed to Chuck had been filled with intelligence beyond top-secret. Dave had included another file, prefaced with the words, “This sounds like something Asimov would write, but I think it’s related and you may need it. DELETE AS SOON AS YOU READ.”

And though she had no idea who Asimov was, read she had. That had been on the flight from Amsterdam to Moscow, another government favor used up and burned. Now, over an hour later, she still wasn’t sure if Dave was kidding. Subliminal data encoded into pictures that could be read by people rather than computers? Human databases? It was far too bizarre to even contemplate, but the file that Dave had sent her had been a very serious briefing on the subject. The technology existed, and Dave seemed to think Bryce and Chuck had stolen it.

It wasn’t nearly as damning as the other bit of information Dave had fed her: Chuck had sent some satellite images of the DNI building to Bryce two weeks before.

Every new sign pointed to Chuck and Bryce being in on this together. Some foolish part of her had been holding out hope that this might all be Bryce’s folly, that he had just dragged Chuck in, that Chuck was just some innocent bystander. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t stop the ulcer forming in her stomach. And sure, it was traitorous as hell to a partner she had been with for years, on and off, but the thought of Bryce as a traitor and a terrorist was much easier to handle than Chuck.

She kept her features schooled as she purchased a couple of protein bars and water from the only café open in the terminal and she ate every bite of the protein bars and drank every drop of the water. Her body felt a bit as though somebody had used her for a punching bag. She imagined that even without the constant worry and panic and suppositions that she would be exhausted, given that she had hopped from one flight to the next with very little time in between. And she had an air-drop, petty larceny, and a long night still ahead of her.

She hoped Chuck was still at the bunker.

She feared that Chuck was still at the bunker.

“Excuse me, you wouldn’t happen to have a light, would you?” The voice hinted at British, though the main accent was continental. Sarah nearly jumped and kicked herself for getting so lost in her thoughts that she had allowed her guard to drop. Her contact, a man she knew only by his picture, had apparently found her without her being even so much as aware of his presence.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked in Russian.

The contact grinned. “You’ll have to forgive me. Two strangers meeting in an airport should always have some sort of code phrase, so I decided to make one up. I am Yuri. I believe you are a friend of…Candace’s?”

“Indeed.” Sarah shook Yuri’s hand. “Lisa Jones.”

“Very nice to meet you, Lisa Jones.”

Trust Carina not to mention that Yuri had the body of an underwear model under his expensive jeans and turtleneck, Sarah thought as she and Yuri sized each other up. She was operating on very little but faith and her own savings now, so she would have to trust that Carina’s “friend from way back” knew what he was doing. At least he hadn’t asked any pesky or incriminating questions when she had called from Amsterdam to hire him.

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Yuri asked, switching over to English.

Coffee would never agree with her stomach, though the caffeine would help. Sarah smiled. “I’d love a cup of tea.”

Yuri paid for the tea, which, considering how much she was paying him for his services, she couldn’t help but appreciate. She added too much sugar, and the first sip cloyed her mouth, but she didn’t care. She just tapped the spoon against the rim and set it on her napkin. “Were you able to get all of the equipment I requested?”

“It was not easy, but…” Yuri shrugged. He gulped his tea, even though a small sip had scalded Sarah’s mouth. “But I did not get where I am today by not being the best. You will want to look over, yes?”

“I will.”

“My man, Ilya—my brother, you know—he is doing the final checks on our plane, and then we will meet him on the runway.”

Sarah took another sip of the too-sweet tea. “I’ll do the checks mid-flight.” She would prefer to check over the equipment on the ground, but time was of the essence. Chuck and Bryce, if they were truly working together, had about ten hours on her at this point, and their lead-time would only increase.

It would only increase farther if she had to turn around due to faulty gear, though.

“Actually,” Sarah said, “I’d like to do the checks pre-flight. How soon can we get to the plane?”

“Finish your tea, and then we will see my plane.”

 **26 SEPTEMBER 2007  
UNLISTED COORDINATES, SIBERIA  
02:19 OMST**

If Sarah Walker believed in luck, she would have spent the past twelve hours cursing hers, but even she had to thank her lucky stars that she had survived the jump from Yuri No-Last-Name’s plane. Even though she had inspected the chute, the cabling had caught, and she’d been forced to pull the reserve, which meant her landing was quite a bit harder than expected. She could only be grateful she made it through the experience with only her bones rattled.

She policed her drop-site, tucking the chute back into the pack, while her body all but vibrated from the force of the impact. Siberia, in the middle of the night, was eerily akin to the desert in that there was no noise save for a little wind that rustled beneath her cap. The last time she had been here, it had been the middle of November, but in the dead hours of the morning, it seemed just as cold and just as desolate. Night-vision goggles and a GPS meant she didn’t have a problem navigating. She simply tried not to think about the few horror movies that she had seen over the years as she jogged, heading for the nearest sign of civilization.

The jog was a hair under ten kilometers. She jogged the first four still toting the parachute, but stopped just before three a.m. to bury the pack. She wouldn’t need it again, and her body was already beginning to drag from exhaustion, so she would just let the bag be a mystery for some random hiker that might stumble over it someday.

The remaining few kilometers gave her far too much time alone with her thoughts, which had been her problem since she had convinced Mitch to fly her from Dulles to Amsterdam. Her only reprieve from thinking had been a tiny catnap on the plane from Amsterdam to Russia. And, she thought somewhat wryly, on Yuri’s plane. Yuri and Ilya, who could have passed for twins but apparently weren’t, hadn’t shut up for a single minute of the flight. It should have been annoying. It had instead been a relief.

So as she jogged, trying to ignore just how leaden her arms and legs and chest felt, and reviewed what she knew. Two weeks ago, Chuck had emailed Bryce satellite heat scans of the DNI. Twelve hours before, Bryce had broken into the DNI, stolen intel, blown up the site, and had escaped. He had sent a large email to Chuck that contained said email. And if Dave was right, the contents of that email had been something unbelievably valuable, and unbelievable besides.

As of Dave’s last contact, Bryce had not been found, and he had not reported in. The higher-ups still didn’t know of the email or of Chuck’s involvement.

She mentally reviewed every conversation she had had with Bryce in the past six months, but she could only determine that the bastard had not done one suspicious thing. Bryce had not dropped a single hint. Had he been playing it cool to keep her out of it? Or was he just heartless? What was his bigger plan? Why had he done all of this? Why would he recruit Chuck for this and not her, unless it really was terrorism?

She had a sinking feeling that she was too late, that Chuck and Bryce, if they were really working together, were already five steps ahead of her, that it was all futile, that she was giving up everything for nothing, but her steps across the snow never faltered and her pace never slackened.

The little town she had picked wasn’t much, just a handful of houses clustered together. After three in the morning, there wasn’t a single light on. She could have walked right down the middle of the town’s single road if she chose. She stuck to the edges of town instead. One insomniac wandering around town and her entire plan was blown.

She found her quarry in a barn that was either on the outskirts or center of town, depending on how many steps she took to one side or the other. It took another fifteen minutes of solid pushing over the permafrost and the snow before she was comfortable enough to climb aboard the stolen snowmobile and hotwire the engine into starting. Before she did so, however, she allowed herself a quick breather, wolfing down an MRE she’d brought to keep her body fueled. She ate it cold and tried not to think about Chuck, how he had had nothing but these things, and the gifts she occasionally bribed Josh Preto into sending his way, for the past three years.

It had been seven hundred and six days since she had seen Chuck.

She buried the MRE remains and replaced the heating packs inside her gloves so that they would be warm when she drew them back on. Unfortunately, she hadn’t thought to bring fingerless gloves, which meant she had to work bare-handed to hotwire the engine. It took less than a minute but even so, she was near the point of tears at how frozen solid and miserable her fingers were by the time the snowmobile engine purred to life. That, more than anything else, frustrated an actual growl out of her. God, she hated Bryce Larkin. Innocent, guilty, whatever the hell he was, right now she hated him. Annoyed, she revved the snowmobile engine, double-checked her GPS, and shot into the darkness.

In less than two hundred kilometers, she would be face to face with Chuck Bartowski again—if he was still there. She didn’t know whether to hope so or not.

 **26 SEPTEMBER 2007  
BUNKER 77142135  
06:08 OMST**

There were no tracks leading to or from the bunker.

That was…odd.

Even if Chuck had taken off hours before, Sarah was sure it hadn’t snowed in the area, and she doubted Bryce or Chuck was precise enough in covering up their escape that it would stand up to close scrutiny. She lowered the binoculars and frowned to herself behind the facemask. The email had been sent to the bunker, so for Chuck to have received it, he would have had to be in the bunker…

Or maybe the email was a decoy and Chuck had been long gone from the bunker even before Bryce had broken into the DNI. The thought made her cold in a way that had nothing to do with the frigid air swirling all around her. Had Chuck and Bryce tricked her into coming all the way out to Siberia? She was the one person in the CIA that knew both of them best, and sending her to Siberia was pretty much the perfect wild goose chase in the critical first twenty-four hours of their escape.

She pulled her gun from where it had been tucked against her back. She hadn’t brought camouflage gear, so her gray parka and black snow pants would stand out in the cleared space around the bunker, a squat little building that had not changed at all in the past two years, and sneaking up would do absolutely no good. Even though she’d disabled the sensor half a klick back, if Chuck suspected she was coming, he probably already knew she was there. So, holding onto her gun and steering with her left hand, she kicked the snowmobile back into motion and drove the last few hundred feet to the bunker’s entrance.

Nothing shot at her. That was usually a positive sign, but she stayed tensed.

She didn’t leave the snowmobile idling, though she wanted to in case things got tricky. Kicking off the snowshoes wasted precious time outside the entrance. Again, nothing shot at her, and there was no sign of life from outside or inside the bunker. She felt her heart begin to pound against her ribcage, and told herself it was just her situational awareness kicking into overdrive. She had no idea what she would find inside the bunker. Nerves were to be expected.

Yeah, right.

Even with the code, it took a little muscle to open the door, but she shoved her way through. No ambush, no shots. She was probably right; the email had most likely been a decoy, and she had burned her carefully planned extraction route, showed her hand to her superiors, and wasted precious time following a dead lead for nothing.

Assuming Graham didn’t fire her ass for breaking ten thousand and one protocols, she was now pretty much guaranteed to be the laughingstock of the Agency.

Those thoughts bounced around, fueling her anger and hatred for Bryce as she crept farther into the bunker. The walls closed in around her just like she remembered, but she took a deep breath. There was plenty of oxygen, drugged or not, inside the bunker. She would be fine.

The office was empty. So was the kitchen. That left only the bunk room.

The door to the bunk room was open, but thanks to the humming of the generator, she couldn’t hear anything from inside. Either Chuck was there, or he wasn’t. If he was, he was probably sleeping. At either rate, it would take a simple step forward, and she would know.

Sarah took a deep breath, let it out. And even though she knew it was foolish and she should just do it already, she repeated the process. Her heart was still hammering, pounding erratically now so that there was no set rhythm as it bashed against her ribcage. Thankfully, her hands were steady on the gun. Shaking hands gave away an agent’s secrets every time.

Get over it, Walker, she ordered herself.

Something beeped. Sarah nearly shouted and whirled, but instinct instead drove her step forward toward the noise and right into the doorway with her gun up.

Her heart stopped. She didn’t know for how long, all she knew was that the pounding in her chest cut off abruptly and time seemed to freeze—and then her heart started again, this time speeding like a jackrabbit.

Chuck evidently didn’t hear her, for he didn’t turn. His back was to her as he fussed with something at the foot of the top bunk.

Oh, God. She had forgotten how _tall_ he was.

What was he still _doing_ here? Why hadn’t he noticed her? What the hell was going on?

She knew she should say something, should announce her presence someway, but a lump formed in her throat, possibly from fear and anger and frustration. She couldn’t have spoken right then if she tried.

She didn’t have to. Chuck half-turned, reaching for something on the bed. She knew the instant he spotted her because he froze like an animal caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. His eyes widened so much that she could see the whites around his irises even clear across the dim room.

“Sarah?” he asked. “Sarah Walker?”


	2. In the Chillest Land

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “ _Hope” is the thing with feathers -  
>  That perches in the soul -  
> And sings the tune without the words -  
> And never stops - at all - _  
> _And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -  
>  And sore must be the storm -  
> That could abash the little Bird  
> That kept so many warm - _  
> _I’ve heard it in the chillest land -  
>  And on the strangest Sea -  
> Yet - never - in Extremity,  
> It asked a crumb - of me._  
> \- Emily Dickinson, **“Hope” is the Thing with Feathers**

**26 SEPTEMBER 2007  
BUNKER 77142135  
06:22 OMST**

“Sarah?” Chuck blinked heavily a few times, his eyes still wide. “Sarah Walker? What are you doing—”

“Where is he?” Sarah asked, surprising herself. The confusion at seeing Chuck had slammed into her, allowing her to feel the metallic aftertaste of her own exhaustion after hours of being in constant motion. The words came out harsher than she intended.

Chuck blinked. “What? Who?”

What the hell did he mean, _who_? “Where is _Bryce_ , Chuck?” she asked. “I know you were helping him with this.”

Chuck only looked more deeply confused, which made Sarah grit her teeth. “Helping him with what? Why on earth would I know where Bryce is? That’s your job! You’re his partner, not me.”

That wasn’t entirely fair, as Sarah had always considered Chuck an equal part of their team, even if they didn’t use his services on every mission. She shifted her grip on the gun. Usually by now she would have lowered it slightly, as keeping the gun up grew tiring, especially on top of everything she had been through. But anger and frustration gave her extra strength right now even despite the exhaustion. “Two weeks ago, you sent him heat-scans from a satellite of a classified area in Washington D.C. Why did you do that?”

Chuck’s eyebrows drew low over his eyes. The dimmed lighting in the bunk room made it hard to see, but she didn’t see any of the tells that meant he was lying “For your mission, duh,” he said, as if she should already know. “You mean, he didn’t show them to you? He said they were for a mission he was working on, so I just assumed you were involved.”

“Did he _say_ I was involved?” If he had, it looked like Chuck might not be the only unwitting accomplice—assuming, Sarah’s agent half reminded her, that that was what Chuck was. Just because he hadn’t given any signs that he was lying didn’t mean that he wasn’t a practiced liar.

“What?” Chuck’s bafflement seemed real, at least. She could see him actively searching his memory. “No, I don’t think so, not outright. But then, I didn’t ask.” His eyes cut down to the S&W in her hands. “Jeez, why are you pointing a gun at me? Sarah, what’s going on? Why are you here? And where’s Bryce?”

She ignored the panic, though it was difficult. “Has he contacted you?”

“What? No, of course he hasn’t—” Chuck broke off in the middle of his sentence. His eyes widened. “He sent me an email. Yesterday.”

Something in his voice sent cold fear coursing through Sarah. She swallowed, and hoped it wasn’t obvious. If Dave was right… “Did you open it?”

“Of course I did! It’s an email from my best friend. I opened it on my break, if you’re worried about me wasting Uncle Sam’s dime—”

At any other point in time, she might have found his affronted look adorable. Right now, she had to fight a sinking feeling in her stomach. “I’m not,” she said, interrupting him. “I need to see that email, Chuck.”

“Sure, no problem.” He shrugged. “You can, uh, you can put the gun away. I won’t try anything, I swear.”

She wanted to believe him. She was trained in recognizing lies and falsehoods, and Chuck hadn’t displayed a single thing but honesty and confusion. But there were still too many unanswered questions that were now preying on her mind, so she kept the gun pointed at him as he led the way back to the office. If Bryce was in the bunker and had somehow managed to find a hiding spot, well…Sarah might need a hostage.

She didn’t think about that too deeply. She couldn’t.

The instant Chuck touched his computer keyboard, his body language changed. He had squared away from her when she had pointed the gun at him, unconsciously providing the smallest target, but the minute his fingers tapped the keys, he seemed to forget that she was in the office with him, quite a feat given just how crowded it was with both of them in there.

She had to clear her throat to get his attention. “What is it?”

“My hard drive! What the fu—” Chuck seemed to explode into life and motion; he tapped keys, checked cable connections on various machines, and lunged over to check a series of dials on the wall opposite her. Sarah took a half-step back. Even if she was still pointing the gun at him, there was a chance he would just forget about her and stampede right on through. He pushed a hand through his hair, which was longer than she remembered and curling faintly. “There wasn’t a heat surge in here, and I _just_ serviced that unit, which means something must have gotten onto my hard drive. But that makes no sense, I modified that virus protection software myself and—Bryce.”

Though she got the distinct feeling he wasn’t even talking to her, Sarah asked, “What about Bryce?”

“I opened the email—it was just a line of text from a video game we used to play back at Stanford. I thought it was just a game, honestly, but then there were all these pictures…” Chuck trailed off with a frown, not looking at her.

She almost nudged him with her gun to get his attention. “You saw them? And then what?”

Oh, God. Please let Digital Dave be wrong, she thought.

“I passed out. I don’t know how long I was out. When I came to, my boss, Mr. Carver, he wanted me to report and asked if I needed medical attention, but I got a call from Bryce and—”

Sarah jerked. “You got a what?”

“Bryce, he called me on the satellite phone—” Chuck broke off as Sarah swore.

The timing, Sarah thought as she switched to a one-handed grip and picked up the phone, the same one Bryce had brought to the bunker nearly two years before, was too perfect. That meant that Bryce had somehow found a way to monitor the bunker’s communications, or he’d known all along exactly what Chuck would do.

It was too much to hope that Bryce might have left a number, but she swore anyway to see “Number Blocked.”

You really couldn’t make things easy on anybody, Bryce, could you? She sent one vicious curse winging his way through the ether and turned her attention back to Chuck, whose panic had eaten through his anger about the broken computer.

“Sarah, what’s going on? Ever since I opened that email, I’ve been having these, these spurts of, I don’t know, insight or something. And I know things I shouldn’t know about some very, very bad people. Why do I know that?”

And he gave her a look full of trust and terror. Face it, Walker, her brain piped up. You never really believed he was intentionally involved with Bryce’s plot. You stupid woman. All of the anger and Agency training in the world couldn’t hold up against Chuck Bartowski. She was a fool, and an idiot, and there was no way in hell this was ever going to end well.

She lowered the gun. Chuck wouldn’t have helped blow up a building, not if it could lead to casualties. She knew that. She’d known that since the minute Dave had told her who had sent the email, and thinking differently had nearly caused acid reflux. Or it would have, if she’d stopped even long enough to _be_ sick. Her hands shook as she shoved the gun back into its customary spot at her back.

“Chuck, what I’m about to tell you is top secret. I had to call in a lot of favors to keep this suppressed, so I need your word that you’ll keep your mouth shut.”

“Done,” Chuck said. “Now tell me what the hell is going on!”

Sarah took a deep breath. The time for reckoning had come. She looked up into Chuck’s face, and knew that the agent part of her was all but about to groan aloud at her possible naïveté. “Bryce Larkin is a rogue agent wanted by the CIA.”

“Since when?”

“Since he broke into a secure facility twenty-four hours ago. He bombed a supercomputer the NSA and the CIA are calling the Intersect—it’s a computer powerful enough to encode subliminal data into messages that can be cross-referenced by both agencies. There’ve been rumors that they’re going to use it to send intelligence agents into the field, and Bryce destroyed not only the computer, but all of the files as well, but not before he downloaded them and sent them to you. He’s since gone off the grid, though he may be injured.”

She saw outright disbelief in Chuck’s eyes, but he just swallowed hard. “I watched the pictures. Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. I was sent out to find him and to secure the copy he sent you.” It was best, Sarah thought, not to let Chuck know that she wasn’t entirely sanctioned at the moment. There were other, more important things to deal with, like the fact that Chuck had just become something that was supposed to be only highly theoretical, according to the briefing. She forced herself not to think about that yet. “Was that the only copy?”

“Yes, I have a program that automatically downloads my emails to my hard drive and deletes them off the server.” Chuck pushed both hands through his hair, and she got the feeling he had just rattled off a bunch of computer talk without even remember who he was talking to. “It doesn’t make any sense, Sarah. Bryce loves his country. He’d give up his life before he would turn rogue or traitor or whatever. There’s gotta be something else going on here.”

“There’s not,” Sarah said, though she had no definitive way to know that. “There’s not. But Bryce has successfully managed to make it so that you’ve now become a super-computer—and property of the United States government.”

Chuck, thankfully, did not stare at her like she had grown an extra head, though she was positive she would have deserved it. Instead, he did something much worse. The blood drained out of his face, and he shot a look of such pure horror at her that Sarah felt her stomach churn. “Oh, God.” It was a moan. “They’re going to stick me in an underground bunker. Again. My term was up in two _months_! It was almost done!” Desperation threaded his voice and he swung around to look at her, almost accusingly. “What the hell? Why would Bryce do this to me?”

She didn’t have the first freaking clue. “Right now,” she said, “it looks like you and Bryce were in this together.”

“We weren’t. Sarah, I wouldn’t. Ever.” Now instead of terrified or confused, Chuck looked hopeless, which was much worse. “Okay, so yeah, maybe the CIA wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be when they recruited me at Stanford, but I still love my country. I did this to protect my friends, my family. I’m not a traitor.”

“I believe you,” Sarah said.

“You—you do? Really?”

It was heartbreaking just how shocked he looked, so she tried to focus past it. “Really. But now we have problems.”

“Like?”

Like the fact that she hadn’t managed to forget him over the past two years, which made everything stickier. Sure, she had pushed him from her thoughts for days, sometimes weeks. Once for an entire month. But it was going to cause problems, she could tell that already. And the fact that that bothered her more than her partner’s alleged treason was one of those problems.

“Proving to the government you’re innocent,” she said, letting agent mode take over. “Normally, my word would be all that they would need, but with Bryce’s betrayal…” And the fact that she had dropped off the grid within an hour of said betrayal hadn’t helped, but it was better not to mention that to Chuck. He already looked panicked enough, hunkered forward with those strange weights hooked to his odd mummy-like wrapped shirt. She forced herself back onto the subject at hand. “Right now, you’re unprotected in the middle of nowhere.”

And she had not packed enough bullets for this.

“And when they figure everything out…I’m going back into the bunker for the rest of my life, aren’t I?”

Over her dead, cold, and napalmed body. Sarah nearly blinked at the vehemence of her reaction, hoping that her face didn’t give any of the fury away. “One thing at a time, Chuck,” she said. An agent couldn’t make promises.

Perhaps she should have. Her words had absolutely no affect on Chuck, as he sank into the desk chair, his eyes wide and once again hopeless. “The only way I’ve been able to stay here was because there was an end. I can’t do this again, Sarah. I can’t let everybody else live life and stay locked up for forever. I’ll—I’ll kill myself before that happens!”

Sarah’s heart stopped. Instinctively, she reached out and grabbed his chin, which would have made her blink if she’d been in full control of her facilities. She immediately regretted it; he looked frightened, flinching away from her touch. “Chuck, one thing at a time, okay?”

He seemed to believe her. Or at least, he stopped flinching. Sarah made sure to keep her movements slow when she drew her hand away from his face, though inwardly she was cursing. The man had gone for two years without human contact, and here she was, practically mauling him.

And the limited space in the bunker was going to make things intensely difficult.

“Okay,” Chuck said, his voice shaking only a little.

She had him go through what had happened to him from the minute the email had arrived, and had him repeat his conversation with Bryce several times. It was an agent trick, or a conman trick, used to catch somebody in a lie. The fact that Chuck’s story fluctuated a little with each rendition soothed her, but it wasn’t enough. She was in the middle of Siberia with a man who had futuristic technology in his skull, technology that belonged to the government of the United States, which meant it was now her job to protect him at all costs.

But the bunker didn’t have any firepower, and she had only her back-up piece on her and one extra magazine. They were essentially sitting ducks. Sure, the properties of the bunker meant they could hide in and wait out a siege, but she had no idea how much food Chuck had left.

An idea started to form at the back of her mind. A risky, horrible, _horrible_ idea. Was it possible? Could she pull it off? She’d burned through most of her extraction plan already, but she had failsafes in place. Did they have enough of a head start? Was she strong enough and smart enough to stay a step ahead of whatever Bryce had planned? At times, she had felt like a mouse in a maze during the ops he had planned, and she had never been able to best him at chess. Game theory had always been Carina’s strength, not hers.

But the more she thought about it, the less of a choice it seemed she had. And she had one thing on her side: her own natural reticence. Bryce could try to outthink her, the government could throw one psych eval after the next at her, but Sarah had showed neither her full hand, ever. She had Jack Burton to thank for that.

But could Jack Burton’s daughter keep Chuck _safe_? Damn it.

“And then you showed up, and here we are,” Chuck said, finishing his story.

Sarah pushed the lump in her stomach down. She had to keep Chuck balanced; intelligent conversation seemed to do that, so she would appeal to that side of him until she had a better plan. “None of that helps me much,” she said, “except it confirms that Bryce intended you to open that email. Otherwise he would have made the code harder.”

“I agree. And thank you, for not making fun of me for playing Zork.”

At least you have a hobby, Sarah wanted to say. She’d spent her last day off watching soap operas and wondering what the point was.

She gave him a small smile, which faded quickly. It wasn’t a day for smiling. “It doesn’t help that Bryce made you an unwitting accomplice. I’m not sure how secure this station is, or who to trust. This is big, Chuck.”

“Huge. So _how_ can we know who to trust?”

He was already looking to her to lead, which was a mistake, especially with what she was considering.

“All of my usual contacts are out. I don’t know if Bryce was working with any of them, and I don’t have time to check and keep an eye on you.” She took a deep breath and finally gave in. “We’re going to have to run.”

 **26 SEPTEMBER 2007  
TRANS-SIBERIAN EXPRESS  
12:48 YEKT**

Sarah slid open the compartment door with some difficulty, both because she and Chuck had managed to get the one compartment with the tricky door and because her hands were full. She didn’t have to be a spy or even particularly observant to see the way Chuck jolted and took a deep breath, as though she were coming in to torture him rather than feed him. He’d stuffed himself back into the corner of the bench, close to the window but far away from the door. Thankfully, they had a private compartment on the Trans-Siberian Express. Otherwise, Sarah would never have been able to leave Chuck alone, not with him reacting the way he was.

To be fair to him, he recovered quickly now. “You came back,” he said, sounding surprised.

“Of course I did.” Sarah made sure to keep her voice nonchalant. Chuck trusted her—he probably trusted her too much—but there was a long way to go before it would become a natural belief, and she needed that from him if this plan was going to work. And that meant constant reassurance delivered in an everyday way, like she regularly took agents-turned-intelligence-assets off the grid and on the run through Russia.

She kept her movements slow as she unwrapped the silk scarf she’d used to cover her hair. Thanks to her bone structure, she blended in better in Russia than most other places, but she figured it was best to obscure as much as possible, which meant covering up her blonde hair, which would stand out on security surveillance footage. She would make it harder for the analysts or Bryce to find them however she could.

She set the bags she had bought on the bench, still moving slowly. Outside of the bunker, exposed in natural light, Chuck’s pallor was startling, but it wasn’t as bad as the fact that he jumped at everything, which was only putting her on edge. She had to keep reminding herself that it had been three years since he had done anything like this, that everything was a new experience for him.

If this was scary for her, it was a thousand times worse for him. He had a computer in his head, he had been ripped away from everything he had known for three years, and neither of them had the first clue about who they could trust and who they couldn’t.

It made Sarah want to hit something. Instead, she just sat down opposite Chuck, careful to keep eye contact. She held out one of the sack. “Here. Eat it while it’s hot.”

“What is it?”

“A shawerma.”

“Uh, bless you,” Chuck said uncertainly. He took the sack from her, careful not to let his fingers brush against hers.

“They’re like gyros,” Sarah said, unwrapping her own. “You’ll like it, I think.”

“Oh. Well, thank you. What are all the other bags for?”

“It’s a long ride to Moscow. We’ll get hungry again and I don’t really want to leave you alone any longer than I have to.”

“Oh.” Chuck didn’t say anything more than that, but then, he didn’t need to. He hunched his shoulders inward a little bit, and she could practically read the emotions across his face: intense relief that she wouldn’t leave him alone again, followed by shame and embarrassment that he would feel that relief.

Maybe, Sarah thought, she should have taken him out onto the platform with her, but she knew better. Though she had changed into nondescript clothing, she could see that Chuck didn’t want to abandon the odd mummy-shirt and the pants he’d worn in the bunker. He’d taken off the parka and hung it neatly by the door, which meant he looked less like three years of constant MREs hadn’t done him any favors, but thanks to the pallor, the jumpiness, and the odd shirt, she really needed to keep Chuck in the compartment as much as possible. She was dreading the moment she would have to ask him to change, to give up the last remnants of the bunker.

He took a tentative bite of the shawerma. Sarah nearly reached for her gun when his eyes widened, but Chuck just took a bigger bite. And Sarah watched in awe (and fear for his fingers) as Chuck devoured the pita sandwich.

“S’good!” he said, looking surprised. “S’really good!”

It had been the first warm, fresh food he had had in three years, Sarah remembered. Wordlessly, she held out another sack to him.

The caution returned. “What’s this?”

“Seconds. They’re pretty cheap, so I bought a few.”

“Oh.” Chuck took his time eating the second shawerma, and Sarah’s stomach settled down to let her enjoy her own. She wondered what it was like, eating the exact same thing for three years in a row, so that a cheap sandwich bought off a vendor at a Russian train station inspired that sense of wonder.

It made her want to shoot something. Or cry. She was more comfortable with the first option.

“Unfortunately, we’re going to be stuck with these for the rest of the trip. And some fruit.” Sarah showed Chuck one of the sacks.

He poked inside. “Is it like Ramen?”

“Yes.” She cringed inwardly. The guy’s first real food in three years, and she was forcing the gastronomical equivalent of Styrofoam on him.

Chuck, however, startled her by giving her a real smile. “Awesome. I love Ramen.”

Belatedly, Sarah remembered that Bryce had brought him Spaghetti-Ohs during the trip to the bunker. She should have anticipated this.

“Excellent,” she said. “The station had a newsstand, too. They didn’t have a big selection in English, but they did have this. It’s a long ride to Moscow.”

“You bought out the station, didn’t you?” Chuck’s grin flashed, and he seemed to relax until she opened the bag the newsstand had given her. He bolted upright. “Oh, awesome! I’ve been trying to keep up with this series online, but I was a little behind. Thanks!”

That was a lie, Sarah determined. He’d already read the comic book—which she had thought was a fortuitous find—online. She felt part of her deflate until Chuck picked up the comic, tracing his fingers wonderingly over the front page, simply taking in the texture.

 _And when they figure everything out…I’m going back into the bunker for the rest of my life, aren’t I?_

Chuck’s words, which had played through her head through the entire morning while they’d raced to catch the Trans-Siberian Express, echoed again now. Sarah quickly looked away from Chuck and out the window. She told herself she was scanning the station for signs of trouble, and that the sunlight outside was a little bright on her face, which was why she blinked a lot.

Was she doing this, running away with Chuck, really to keep him protected? Or was it to keep him, all of him, out of the bunker for life? Where did she draw the line?

She had signed her own death warrant in blood the minute she had told Chuck to go fetch all of his things, and she had sent a text to Dave, the last communication the CIA would have from her. She had stomped on the phone and disconnected the satellite phone in the bunker, thus severing all contact. Even the agent part of her had to admit it was smart, if a bit old-school. The only person you could trust in the field was yourself. When in doubt, it was best to remember that. With Bryce’s actions being so questionable, dropping out of sight was smart. It let her evaluate what was safe and what wasn’t, and it kept Chuck out of the crosshairs just a little while longer.

What wasn’t smart was having thoughts of never coming back, of just vanishing permanently. It was the only way to definitively keep Chuck out of a godforsaken bunker.

Why the _hell_ had Bryce done this to him? To her? Why would he risk lives and blow up the Intersect? Why hadn’t she seen it coming?

“You okay?” Chuck’s voice drew her back into the compartment.

A second later, the train jerked and shuddered, a sign that they were moving again. Chuck’s hand automatically shot out to grab onto the rail by the window, and even Sarah’s fingers twitched for her gun. They gave each other mutually sheepish grins.

“Yeah,” Sarah lied. “I’m fine.”

She wasn’t. Her body almost physically hurt thanks to the exhaustion and strain she had put on it by racing across the planet, but thanks to rigorous training, she knew she had a couple of days of wakefulness left in the can before it became seriously detrimental to her health and mental facilities. Stress was making her stomach churn again. The shawerma had helped, but not much.

“Hey, look.” Chuck pawed through the bag from the newsstand, his eyebrows high. He waved something at her. “It really is going to be a long train ride, hmm?”

“I figured it couldn’t hurt.”

Chuck split open the deck of cards. “I haven’t been able to play a good game of Solitaire outside the computer in years,” he said. “It’s the weirdest thing, but for some reason the deck in the bunker is missing the Jack of Hearts, which makes it a little difficult to play.”

Sarah kept her gaze focused out the window. “Do you have any idea where it could have gone?”

“That’s the strange part. I mean, it’s a government bunker. There’s not a lot of places the card could be, and I’ve looked everywhere.” Chuck shrugged. “I guess it’ll always be a mystery.”

“Guess so.”

“Go Fish for old times’ sake?” Chuck asked, shuffling easily. “I figure it’s probably safer than strip poker, considering how badly you cheat.”

Some devil inside of Sarah made her raise one eyebrow. “Does that mean if I promise not to cheat, we’d be playing strip poker?”

Chuck turned red. “I don’t think strip poker would be such a good idea, even if the door does lock. I mean, I hardly know you and—”

“I was kidding. Poker’s something you only play for money.”

She could practically see the relief rolling off of him. “Or nuts and bolts.”

“And I’ll have you know, using every opportunity is not cheating, it’s just smart.” Sarah grinned. “It’s been awhile since I played Go Fish. You’re on.”

 **26 SEPTEMBER 2007  
TRANS-SIBERIAN EXPRESS  
23:17 YEKT**

It was an interesting parallel, Sarah couldn’t help but think. The longer they stayed in the same train compartment together, the more relaxed Chuck grew and the edgier she became. She was pretty sure she hid it well, thanks to having won paychecks off of her fellow operatives in Agency poker games for years, even if Chuck was observant and oblivious by turns. A day with very little to do but stare at the passing Russian countryside—until she had noticed that Chuck seemed uncomfortable with so much openness and had closed the curtain—was bound to wear anybody in the best of circumstances, and things were far from ideal.

She should be sleeping. After all, the first thing they were taught at training was how to catnap when there was nothing else to do, and Sarah had put her body through hell over the past…she couldn’t even count anymore. She had only been asleep for an hour and a half before Dave’s phone call had interrupted her dreams, and she had been in three planes, which meant lowered oxygen levels, had parachuted into Siberia, jogged ten kilometers, committed petty larceny, and taken a snowmobile several hundred kilometers. That was on top of stress and while keeping a vigilant eye out for her traveling partner, who, though he didn’t mean to be a pain, presented several problems.

He was rereading the comic for the fifth time and looked like he wasn’t going anywhere. She should really use this opportunity, while he was relaxed, to recharge her body.

Instead, she just sat back against the seat and stared at the wall opposite. Had Dave told the higher-ups about the email to Chuck? Were they even now on their way to the bunker, to collect him for treason and terrorism? By now, Sarah knew they suspected she was involved. Her actions in racing to Chuck without reporting in had more than cast a suspicious light on her. On the slightest chance both she and Chuck made it through the next few days alive, she would be lucky to be pushing papers in the Mount Washington Observatory. Years of service to the Agency, working toward a promotion and prestige, down the drain.

It almost physically hurt. But there was no point in wondering what she might have done differently, not when she was operating off as little information as she was. She had to trust her instincts right now.

“Hey, Sarah?”

Sarah snapped out of her thoughts. Chuck had set the comic aside and was looking at her hesitantly. It was a little heartbreaking, after remembering just how fun and open he had been on her visit to the bunker, to see just how small and shy the outside world made him.

“Yes?” she asked, hoping he hadn’t had to say her name more than once to get her attention.

“Do you need the light on? I think I’m going to try and get some rest…”

“Oh. Right. Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Sarah rose to turn off the light herself. She tossed Chuck his parka to use as a pillow, but he put it on instead, which made her shrug to herself. When she turned to head back to her berth, however, she forgot about the bag she’d brought with her. And like a first-year trainee who hadn’t cased the room, she tripped.

Before Sarah had even registered the sensation of falling or had time to curse, a hand shot out of the darkness. She blinked, and she was back on her feet. Chuck also had both hands on her upper arms. He’d literally caught her before she could nose-dive into the floor. She hadn’t even heard or seen him move.

The instant he realized he was touching her, he all but yelped and nearly stumbled backwards. “Sorry, sorry—”

Sarah didn’t put a hand over her belly to still the surprised nerves, but it was a close thing. “Why would you be sorry?” she asked, ignoring her pounding heart. “You saved me.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“Fine, then you spared my dignity. Thank you.”

She couldn’t be sure in the darkness, but she thought he might be flushing. Great, Sarah thought. That made two of them. “Maybe you should, ah, move the bag so that doesn’t happen again?” Chuck asked.

“Yeah, good idea.” Sarah kicked it out of the main pathway between the berths. “Happy to provide the evening’s entertainment, I guess.”

There was a pause from the other side of the compartment, which she was starting to make out thanks to her night-vision adjusting. “It’s a class act,” Chuck finally said, and she saw him shift about in the dark, trying to get comfortable on the bench even though there were bunks above their heads. She wondered why until she remembered that he had always taken the bottom bunk in the bunker—as if she would forget exactly what had happened to her in that bunk, ever. She didn’t begrudge him the familiarity, even if it meant she was stuck on the opposite bench. “G’night, Sarah.”

“Good night,” Sarah replied.

She didn’t sleep. She should have; her body craved real, deep rest like an actual, tangible yearning, but her mind wouldn’t still long enough for sleep to come. She had only her damn near photographic memory to thank for that, as her thoughts wandered once again to Bryce. What were his motives? What could he possibly gain by blowing up the Intersect and sending it to Chuck? If he intended to sell Chuck to the highest bidder, why hadn’t he collected Chuck yet? Had something happened in the explosion and she had simply arrived before him? Was Bryce chasing them through Russia even now?

Were they playing right into his hands?

For the love of everything that was holy, why hadn’t she seen _something_ , some clue, anything, that would have given her a warning that this day was approaching?

Hours dragged by in darkness while her brain ran in circles. For the fiftieth time, she replayed every single conversation she could remember having with Bryce over the past six months, but once again, she came up with nothing. Even though they had been trained by the same teachers, had been partners for years, through, as they said, thick and thin, she hadn’t been able to pick up a single detail that things might not be all they seemed with Bryce.

As a spy, it made her feel like a failure.

As Bryce’s ex-partner, it made her feel fury like none other, sitting hot behind her chest. She felt the damning sting of tears and held her breath, hoping she didn’t sniffle and give herself away in case Chuck wasn’t actually sleeping.

He wasn’t.

She heard his intake of breath, so she didn’t jolt when he asked, “Why would he do it?”

Apparently she wasn’t the only one wondering. Sarah blinked hard a couple of times to clear her eyes. “I don’t know.”

“I mean, the guy’s like a boy scout—hell, he _was_ a boy scout.”

“Eagle Scout,” Sarah said. Bryce had told her that once in Colombia, when they’d been stuck camping for a couple of days and he had been building a fire for them.

He’d grinned as he said it, just a little sheepishly.

“So why do this?” Chuck went on. “Why betray his country like this?”

Sarah closed her eyes. The fury was beginning to burn brighter, a painful heat inside her. “I don’t know.”

“You were his partner. Surely you noticed somethi—”

Something inside her snapped. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, maybe it was the fact that she had raced across the planet on very little intel and was now operating on even less. It was definitely the stress. Sarah didn’t know what she was doing until she had one fist buried in Chuck’s parka and the other fist so tight that her knuckles striped white and pink in the darkness. “I didn’t suspect a thing. I saw nothing, okay? I thought things were fine. I even went out and had drinks with him the night he stole the Intersect and, still, I noticed _nothing_!”

Was that really her voice?

Chuck stared up at her. In the darkness, she couldn’t quite make out every single one of his features, but she could see enough to know that he wasn’t even breathing. “Is it really me you’re mad at?”

Oh, God. Sarah felt the blood drain from her face until she was as pale as Chuck. What the hell had just come over her? This wasn’t her. She didn’t snap like this. She wasn’t some monster that attacked innocent bystanders. Chuck had done absolutely nothing wrong, and here she was about to pummel him with her fist.

She felt a wave of nausea as she let go and staggered back to her bench.

Chuck’s parka rustled. He sat up and put his elbows on his knees, leaning toward her. Sarah had to fight the urge to tilt back, away from him. She’d all but mauled him, and yet he gave her that frank, earnest look.

“Whatever happened with Bryce, it’s not your fault. He’s his own person. He’ll face the consequences of his actions someday. I fully believe that. But he’s good at pretty much everything he’s ever done, so there’s no use beating yourself up because he kept this a secret. He’s got skills. That’s why he’s Bond.”

Chuck had been through hell. His best friend had sent him the Intersect, made him an unwitting accomplice, and she had pulled him away from his safe haven and out into a world fraught with uncertainty, and here he was, reassuring _her_. Sarah felt another wave of nausea and guilt that she had almost attacked him.

“Except,” she heard herself say in a voice that was distinctly not like hers, “Bond wasn’t a traitor.”

There was nothing but silence from the other side of the compartment for so long that Sarah wondered if her limited knowledge of James Bond had failed her, and the man really was a traitor. But Chuck just cleared his throat after a minute. “Why don’t, ah, why don’t you lie down, get some sleep? I’ll keep watch for awhile, make sure nobody disturbs you or anything.”

And now, on top of everything else, he was being a sweetheart. Sarah felt a sad smile start to form. They really had broken the mold after they had made Chuck Bartowski. “I’m supposed to be protecting you, not the other way around.”

“And I promise that if we get attacked by bad guys, my girlish screams of terror will wake you up in plenty of time.”

Chuck’s words shouldn’t have been reassuring, given exactly what they were facing: Bryce, the government, foreign nationals that might know about Chuck. But Sarah found herself curling up on the bench anyway to humor him since she doubted she would even be able to sleep.

She was wrong. With Chuck watching over her, she was out within minutes.


	3. It's Time You Unbecame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _now does our world descend_   
>  _the path to nothingness_   
>  _(cruel now cancels kind;_   
>  _friends turn to enemies)_   
>  _therefore lament, my dream_   
>  _and don a doer’s doom_
> 
> _create is now contrive;_   
>  _imagined, merely know_   
>  _(freedom: what makes a slave)_   
>  _therefore, my life, lie down_   
>  _and more by most endure_   
>  _all that you never were_
> 
> _hide, poor dishonoured mind_   
>  _who thought yourself so wise;_   
>  _and much could understand_   
>  _concerning no and yes:_   
>  _if they’ve become the same_   
>  _it’s time you unbecame_
> 
> _where climbing was and bright_   
>  _is darkness and to fall_   
>  _(now wrong’s the only right_   
>  _since brave are cowards all)_   
>  _therefore despair, my heart_   
>  _and die into the dirt_
> 
> _but from this endless end_   
>  _of briefer each our bliss-_   
>  _where seeing eyes go blind_   
>  _(where lips forget to kiss)_   
>  _where everything’s nothing_   
>  _-arise,my soul;and sing_
> 
> _-_  ee cummings,  **now does our world descend**

**4 APRIL 2006  
COORDINATES REDACTED  
05:32 EAT**

The factory was supposed to blow in twelve minutes.

There were going to be a lot of disappointed people, Sarah thought as she eased around a corner, automatically checking for any enemy targets before doing so. There were the people in the nearby villages, for whom the factory had destroyed their way of life and polluted the water supply. Her boss, because his two top agents had failed in their secondary task. Her partner, because he liked video games and to, as he put it, “blow shit up.” And herself.

This was going to be yet another failed mission in a string of failed missions. Sure, with a little luck and skill, they would accomplish their primary goal, but leaving another mission incomplete would smart for days, possibly weeks.

The corridor was clear. “C’mon,” Sarah said to her companion, even though he didn’t understand a single word of English. She figured the head jerk was universal for “follow me,” though, and set out, trusting that he would follow her. He had introduced himself as “Imani,” and he had been their entry into the factory, a driver that had been willing to smuggle a couple of CIA operatives in exchange for asylum and a one-way ticket to America for his family.

The problem was, Bryce spoke the local dialect, and she didn’t. She’d been focused on the blueprints and infiltration of the building, while Bryce had taken point on language since the plan wasn’t ever for them to split up. No plan, however, survived first contact with reality, and the first thing that had happened had been Bryce getting separated from Imani and Sarah by an ill-timed guard going on his break. Sarah and Imani had been forced to keep going, which meant that Sarah was now alone in this giant factory with a man who didn’t speak a word of English, French, Russian, Urdu, or Spanish, they were seven minutes behind schedule, and she had no idea where the hell her partner was, which meant that no way in hell was she blowing this building.

The corridor was clear of guards. They made it to the end, Sarah’s boots just as silent as Imani’s bare feet on the linoleum. She wasn’t kitted out with her full gear for this op—just the minimum amount of charges that she would need to place at key points in the infrastructure, a suppressed S&W in her thigh-holster, the unfamiliar, also-suppressed Jericho 941, and a “Just in case” MP-5. Though she wanted to, she didn’t look up at the security cameras in the corner and smile. It wouldn’t be visible through the mask. If things were going to plan in at least one area, those would be nicely looped right now. It made her heart flutter in ways she didn’t want to acknowledge to know that she was maybe being watched in one location, hundreds of miles and continents away.

Dammit, Walker, focus.

“This way,” she said needlessly, turning down yet another endless corridor.

She had memorized the map of the building thanks to the scant forty-two hours of prep work they had received on this mission, but blueprints and layouts never failed to portray just how boring a building could be. The factory was a complicated layout of assembly rooms where the workers were paid too little and worked for inhumane amounts of time, with the offices set above all of that down a series of long, fluorescently-lit hallways. There weren’t even motivational posters on the walls to break up the monotony. Most of the office workers hadn’t arrived for the day, but Sarah knew, according to his schedule, that the head of the company would already be in. He might have been killing the local wildlife and population with his factory’s pollution, and funding some very nasty arms deals, but George Hedare apparently believed in keeping a very strict schedule.

It would make his assassination so much easier.

At the next corner, she bit her tongue over the desire to ask Imani if he was still doing okay, as the Sudanese national wouldn’t understand anyway, and allowed herself a moment to take a deep breath, tightening her grip on her S&W. From this point, there was really no going back. It was a straight shot to Hedare’s office. Time to commit.

She edged around the corner, gun at the ready—and bit back a combination of a yelp and a swear.

“Miss me?” Bryce asked. He leaned against the wall idly, looking entirely out of place in his black fatigues and mask.

Sarah lowered her gun, glad that her reflexes were faster than her nerves, and glared. “God, Bryce, I nearly shot you!”

“But you didn’t.”

“I should have,” Sarah said.

“Just keeping you on your game.”

Sarah had to fight back the answering sigh. Bryce’s games and tricks had been old six months ago. “How did you beat me here?”

“You have the charges bag, so I had nothing to do but wait.” Bryce leaned around her to smile at Imani through his mask, and said something Sarah couldn’t translate. Imani’s return chatter was rapid-fire.

Sarah ignored the guide. “You didn’t think that maybe since you had so much time on your hands, you should have taken out Hedare?”

Bryce shrugged. “You’ve got the murder weapon.”

Sarah wasted no time in shoving it toward him. “I have no idea why we decided I’d be carrying all of the damned gear on this op.”

Bryce patted the MP-5 hanging from a sling on his back, ignoring the other MP-5 in his hand. “I’m the muscle, you’re the finesse, remember? Want me to take Hedare?”

“Yes.” She made sure to keep her voice nonchalant. She trusted Bryce as her partner, but the less the CIA found out about her abhorrence of these assassinations, the better. “I’ll cover you.”

“Always excellent to have you at my back, Mrs. Anderson.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Aw, come on. A few more minutes of this and then we get to go back to being the Andersons. Might as well get into character now.”

At least some part of their partnership was still intact, Sarah thought, in the way that Bryce told Imani to stay put and they set out together down the corridor in perfect formation. It felt so much better to be carrying her S&W than the Jericho, the weapon of choice of Hedare’s second-in-command, ex-Mossad officer Ari Gidon. She ignored Bryce until she saw him glance over his shoulder at her. “Are you okay?”

She was annoyed, but other than that, she was fine, and she said so.

“Really?”

“I’d really like to get on with killing Hedare now, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Fine by me,” Bryce said. They turned the final corridor that led to Hedare’s office, which wouldn’t even be guarded by a secretary at this hour. The man thought he was safe in his own factory. It was nice of the CIA to prove him wrong, Sarah thought.

Bryce paused just inside the executive suite, a few paces from Hedare’s office. “You know what?” he said, looking seriously at her for the first time since they had come into the factory together, smuggled in on Imani’s truck among boxes of chemicals. “You’re no fun anymore, and I can’t figure out why that is.”

Sarah scowled and opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, Bryce slipped away with the Jericho to go kill Hedare.

**4 APRIL 2006  
COORDINATES REDACTED  
05:41 EAT**

“It’s too dangerous,” Sarah insisted for the fifth time.

“Quit being such a downer.” Bryce had been scowling ever since he had slipped into Hedare’s office and back out of it a moment later. Killing a man in cold blood would get to anybody but the most classically trained sociopath. “It’ll be fine.”

“You said that about the mission in Belize.”

“And it turned out fine.”

“Define ‘fine,’ Bryce.”

“We’re not dead, right?”

“We got four people killed. Excuse me if I’m a little less cavalier with other peoples’ lives.”

Bryce rolled his eyes. Sneaking behind him, Imani looked between the two CIA agents, his mask strangely out of place with his factory uniform. He couldn’t understand the words, Sarah figured, but the situation was universal. Two partners arguing.

“Look, the mission is two-fold,” Bryce said, his voice taking on that strained patient quality that Sarah hated because it always seemed to insist that she was being an idiotic female. “Kill Hedare and blow the factory. We’re still here, we haven’t been blown—pun intended, ha, ha. We can complete this mission.”

“The workers are going to start arriving in ten minutes,” Sarah said.

Bryce paused at the corner to check for any guards. “Plenty of time,” he said, looking over his shoulder to give what she felt might have been a ghost of his cocky grin.

“Two of the charges haven’t been set.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I had problems blowing the building if I didn’t know you were still inside it.” Sarah glared.

Bryce glared right back. “This complicates things. How long will it take to set those?”

Sarah brought up her mental map of the facility, calculated distances, considered the guards’ schedules. She had neglected setting these charges because these charges were the farthest out and could theoretically not be detonated with the others. The building would still fall down around them, but it wouldn’t be the complete job the CIA wanted.

“Seven minutes, tops,” she said. “Perfect scenario would be four.”

“Make it six, and meet us in the transportation bay.”

“What are you going to do?”

“My job.”

God, she wanted to punch him in his smug mouth sometimes. Why was it so impossible for him to give her a straight answer?

Bryce must have caught the murderous glint to her expression, for he sighed. “Imani and I are going to go warn the workers who have already arrived. Hit the alarm on the way to the transportation bay to let us know you’re on your way. We should have been out of here already.”

Shut up, Sarah wanted to tell him. But she just nodded and split off, heading to set the charges. This time she did look up at the security camera, but she didn’t smile. She told herself it wasn’t for some sort of assurance.

She was lying.

**4 APRIL 2006  
COORDINATES REDACTED  
05:49 EAT**

No matter how many times she heard it, there was always something new and startling to the sound of gunfire. She didn’t have time to marvel at this highly philosophical observation before the Agency training took over; Sarah crouched and flattened herself to the side of the corridor, her S&W swinging up and her eyes tracking, looking for the source.

Nothing. The corridor was empty.

They weren’t shooting at  _her_ , Sarah realized.

Shit. So much for their clean escape.

She launched herself from a crouch to a full run, the adrenaline kicking through her system and sharpening the world into that odd clarity things seemed to take when danger appeared. Colors brightened. Time seemed to stumble in fits and starts. And Sarah ran. She tucked the S&W back into its holster as she did so, swung the MP-5 up, checked her ammo, switched off the safety, and prepared to round the corner. She had no idea where the shooters were in relation to herself, but she was ninety-five percent sure they were shooting at Bryce.

After all, she knew very few other people in this factory that would have pissed the guards off enough for gunplay to be involved.

The corner led to a short hallway that intersected with a corridor parallel to the one she had just been traveling. She saw Bryce almost immediately. He and Imani had taken cover in a little alcove across the hall from her corner, and they were facing something off to her right, crouched down. Imani’s eyes were huge and white, stark against his dark face, but Bryce seemed pissed off beneath his mask.

He swung around to look at her and quickly jerked the gun away before he could flag her too badly.

Sarah signaled.  _How many_?

_Two. Northeast corner. Semi-automatics._

If it was two now, it would be more soon. They’d need to move quickly. Sarah signaled that she was ready. Bryce held up three fingers, lowered one, lowered the second. On three, he sprang out, providing a quicksilver target. Sarah waited a split-second and then rolled out. It took two squeezes of the trigger. She imagined that she could hear the bullets hitting her targets, but tried not to think about it.

“C’mon,” Bryce told Imani, also ignoring the man’s lack of English. He took point, gun trained ahead of him, trusting that Sarah would bring up the rear. “You get the charges planted?”

“Planted and armed.”

“We’re going to need a way out of here.”

“The guards’ scheduled routes are going to be messed up now.” Sarah took a breath. “Call Chuck.”

She saw Bryce fumble for the sat phone with one hand. “This wouldn’t have happened if you had planted the charges when you were supposed to.”

“Ass,” Sarah muttered under her breath.

Imani looked over his shoulder at her, wide-eyed. Apparently, Sarah thought, some English words  _were_ universal. The three of them were all but running now, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the two dead guards. They’d been lucky so far, but it was only a matter of time until they ran into another set. This time, they wouldn’t have the element of surprise on their side.

Bryce seemed to agree because he ducked into one of the rooms rather than continuing. “We’ll get Chuck to figure out a clean way out of here,” he said, and Sarah did her level best not to roll her eyes. She wasn’t some green first year trainee who needed to have a simple plan explained to her.

Before she could make a biting retort, however, Bryce’s attention shifted to the phone. “Chuck! Hey, buddy!”

Sarah kept herself from jerking in surprise by inching the door open slightly and keeping a look out. They’d picked a storage room, filled floor to ceiling with boxes, for their hideout. It wouldn’t be long before the guards started searching all of the rooms, but for a temporary fix, it was as ideal as it could be. Imani was short and skinny enough to hide in one of the boxes, and she could possibly do the same if she recalled her contortionist training properly. Bryce, she wasn’t sure, but hopefully Chuck would have some kind of solution.

“No, it wasn’t my fault,” Bryce said into the phone, and Sarah rolled her eyes. She wanted to ask him whom the guards had started shooting at first, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to resort to that level of pettiness yet. “Seriously! It wasn’t. Things happen. You got a way out of here, buddy? We’re looking to avoid any more...ah...entanglements. Sure, but be quick about it, okay?”

Sarah held up a hand for silence as a group of guards ran by the door. She let out a breath when they just kept running.

It had been six months since the bunker. Not even six months. Five and a half months. And in that time, things had become strained, almost to a breaking point; they just hadn’t meshed as well as they had before he had changed their Cabo plans. Sure, she’d made a couple of mistakes with Bryce—adrenaline, alcohol, and near-death experiences never mixed well—but thing shouldn’t be this off, even three months after those mistakes had occurred. Bryce had to move on at some point, right? It was like there was a gulf of space and distance between them, and she had no idea how to fix it. She didn’t want to give him what she knew he wanted, and he should have gotten that message by this point. She just wanted her partnership back, without all of the sniping and infighting and bickering.

She wanted to be  _good_ at her job again.

A small noise made her look away from the door in alarm. Imani, their stalwart guide, who hadn’t protested the change in plans when everything had gone belly-up at first, was standing against the wall. He was staring down at the palm of one hand in horror.

From even by the door, she could see the slash of bright red blood against his hand.

“Bryce!” she snapped as Imani seemed to buckle back against the wall.

“What is—oh, God.” Bryce, without having to think about it, threw the satellite phone to her and seemed to teleport across the room to where Imani had crumpled. Sarah caught the phone automatically. “I didn’t know he was hit,” Bryce told her before he turned to Imani, switching to the man’s native tongue.

Sarah could believe it. Shock affected everybody in different ways. She and Bryce had been through the same training, so they both knew the stories of agents who had gone on for hours without realizing they had shrapnel lodged in their bodies after explosions.

“Is it bad?” she asked, wincing in sympathy. She’d been shot a couple of times when she hadn’t been fast or smart enough to duck.  
“Thigh,” Bryce said tightly. “Give me a minute.”

“Hello?” The sound of Chuck Bartowski’s voice in her ear nearly made Sarah drop the phone she had forgotten that she was holding. “Still there, Bryce?”

“It’s me, Chuck,” Sarah said, looking from the door to their injured comrade.

There was a pause. “Sarah?”

“In the flesh. So to speak.”

“Wow, it’s been ages.” Chuck sounded a bit gobsmacked, which made her stomach flutter—or maybe that was just an aftereffect of adrenaline and Imani’s injury. “How are you? You okay?”

“I’m good,” Sarah said. “You’ve got a way out of here for us?” She paused. “And, um, how are you doing?”

She could practically hear his smile through the phone. “Better now,” he said, and Sarah actually forgot how to breathe for a nanosecond. Thankfully, she had turned away from Bryce. She could feel a damn blush beginning to spread across her cheeks. Oh, hell. “And have I got an escape route for you.”

“Wonderful. Hold on just a second?” Sarah lowered the mouthpiece of the phone so that it was against her neck. She would have covered it completely, but she needed her other hand for the gun. “How is he, Bryce?”

“It missed the femoral artery. It’ll hurt, but he’ll be fine if we can get him to a hospital.” Bryce had his eyes narrowed, but not at Imani; he was eyeing her. She immediately felt her stomach drop. Did he suspect something? “Does Chuck have a way out?”

“I’m going to have to guide you around the guards,” Chuck said, apparently having heard his name. “Are you three okay?”

“We’ll be okay if we can get out of here,” Sarah said.

She heard Chuck blow out a shaky breath. “Wow, no pressure or anything. Okay, wait a few seconds, there’s a couple of guards going by, and then you’re clear.”

“Perfect.” Sarah used the opportunity to sling the MP-5 onto her back, pulling her S&W out once more. She’d either need to stay on the phone with Chuck to get them out of there or she would have to support Imani, but either way, it meant she would be shooting one-handed. It didn’t matter to her: she was just as lethal with the Smith & Wesson as she was with the Heckler & Koch. Deeper inside the room, Bryce was hurriedly fashioning a bandage for Imani’s thigh. “Thanks for your help with this, Chuck. I don’t know what we ever did without you.”

“It’s what I’m here for.” The smile was back in his voice. “Okay, shh, they’re coming.”

Sarah’s grip tightened on the gun. She could hear the thump of combat boots against the linoleum now. Though she didn’t need to, she held up her hand for silence from Bryce and Imani, the latter of whom was grimacing and sweating.

Every second was an eternity in its own right as the guards tromped past, though the analytical half of her knew that time was passing normally, that the guards were actually in a bit of a hurry. Sarah didn’t dare breathe, however, until the sound of their footsteps, which had echoed loudly in the stillness, had finally receded.

“Okay, you’re clear,” Chuck said. “Go!”

Sarah jerked her head at the other two. Without missing a beat, Bryce slung Imani over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, leaving a hand free for his PT92. “Which way?” Sarah asked, yanking open the door.

“Your left. You’ve got thirty seconds before another set of guards shows up, I’d suggest booking it.”

“Got it.” She took off, trusting that Bryce, even weighted down, would keep up. He really was the muscle, as he had claimed earlier. The slim look was quite deceptive with him, as it was for her. Neither one of them would ever need help lifting heavy things. “Which way next?”

“Corridor coming up, hook a right.”

She trusted Chuck’s directions. In the beginning, she had been a bit nervous, putting her life in the hands of a man behind a computer in Siberia, but Chuck had proven time and again to keep a cool head whenever they faced danger. She had wondered at times if he ever viewed navigating them through various enemy compounds like one of his video games, and couldn’t be sure how she felt about that. Unlike a video game, life lost in this situation was permanent, but according to Bryce, Chuck was supposed to be a video gaming master.

He proved that now by leading them right out of the facility, almost directly under the noses of the guards. It was quite a distance; by the time they reached the transportation bay, where they would hijack one of the company vehicles, Sarah was panting and Bryce was almost gasping for breath. And the second half of the trip was punctuated by the loud shrilling of the fire alarm, as Sarah had pulled it to evacuate the building.

Bryce dumped Imani in the first truck by the door. “You’re faster at hotwiring cars than I am,” he said between pants. “Give me the phone. I’ll talk to Chuck.”

Sarah’s hand tightened reflexively around the phone, and she was just a hair too slow in handing it over. And she saw, clearly, the way, Bryce’s eyes tracked both movements. He met her gaze for the briefest of instants, and his look was a thousand different things: hurt, confused, upset, annoyed.

And then that moment ended, and she raced to pop the hood and hotwire the car. If she’d had time, she would have closed her eyes or pounded her head against something. Just one more damned stumbling block for them to get over before the partnership could be back to smooth sailing. If that ever happened.

But there wasn’t time. Sarah got to work.

**4 APRIL 2006  
COORDINATES REDACTED  
05:49 EAT**

The explosion, when it happened, was a little less than inspiring.

More like an implosion, Sarah thought, stomping so that the gas pedal kissed the floor. Bryce had the better medical knowledge and he wanted to see the explosion, so she’d taken the wheel of their stolen truck. The ground rumbled, tilting the truck a little, as the building collapsed in on itself. Dust from the surrounding desert flumed up. Sarah pushed the gas pedal harder, glancing constantly in the rearview mirror to make sure that they weren’t being followed more than to watch the explosion. There were fresh bullet scars in the hood and along the sides of the truck, but thankfully, they’d surprised the guards enough to get away.

“We’re clear,” Bryce said, and Sarah wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or the phone. He cleared that up by saying, “Thanks, Chuck. Couldn’t have done it without you, buddy.”

There was a pause as he listened, and he laughed at whatever it was Chuck had said. “No, I didn’t take a cell phone video of the explosion to send to you. I’ll have to remember that next time.” Another pause. “Yeah, sure, I’ll tell her. Bye, Chuck.”

He set the phone on the seat between them and stared out the windshield for a moment. “Chuck says to tell you good-bye for him,” he said at length.

“Oh.” Sarah kept her gaze focused forward as well, though she checked the rearview mirror constantly for signs of anybody following them. It didn’t look like the guards had mobilized fast enough to follow the truck. ”That was nice of him.”

“Yeah,” was all Bryce said to that, before he climbed into the backseat to check on Imani’s wound.

Sarah kept her gaze fixed on the road.

**4 APRIL 2006  
EN ROUTE TO KHARTOUM  
15:02 EAT**

The back of the company car felt more like a church, Sarah thought, or a cathedral or someplace large and quiet, where the air barely stirred even for the people inhabiting it. Realistically, Sarah knew Bryce was only a little over a foot away, sitting on the other side of the backseat, but he sat as still as a marble statue, and just as cold. Which had been, Sarah thought, the way it was since they had arrived at the embassy together that morning. He hadn’t said a word to her beyond what was necessary, and he hadn’t looked at her. Hell, it was like she wasn’t even in the same room with him anymore.

It was making her feel very small, and as a result, annoyed. Mostly at herself—why the hell was Chuck Bartowski so permanently lodged in her thoughts?—but at him, as well. It wasn’t like it was something she could control. Otherwise she’d have flushed Chuck from her system a long time before. It wasn’t like it was convenient, having these thoughts about a man literally stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Damn it.

She watched the desert pass by outside the window, grateful that she had remembered sunglasses this time. She didn’t want this marble statue of a partner sitting next to her—though the description was fitting, as Bryce was rather classically handsome, like one of the Greek gods. She wanted her old partner back, the man who had convinced her to stay up late at that dive bar in Laos so they could compare Farm horror stories, the one who had understood just when she didn’t want to talk and when she did. She hated being at odds with him  _all the time_. She hated knowing that they weren’t being the best because they were too absorbed in stupid little stuff.

Why the hell hadn’t they just gone to Cabo, had a week of passionate sex on the beach, and settled into a mindless romance? It would be so much easier than this turmoil.

The statue beside her cleared his throat, the first sign of life she had seen or heard from him in an hour. Sarah half-turned in acknowledgement, but slowly. She didn’t want Bryce to think she had been waiting eagerly for his first move.

“I’ve been thinking,” Bryce said, and Sarah nearly teased him about hurting himself. The timing, however, was awful for that.

So she just lifted a brow. “About?”

“When we get back to DC.” Bryce didn’t look at her. “I’m going to request a transfer.”

Sarah’s hands went cold. Even though the day outside was boiling hot, the air conditioning inside the car had been blasting. Before Bryce’s announcement, it had been pleasant, but now Sarah’s hands felt as though somebody had simply plunged them into a bucket of ice. She blinked a couple of times, both unsure of Bryce’s meaning and understanding all too well what he had said.

“To?”

“Solo work.” Now Bryce did turn to look at her, but his face was just as cold and the same granite façade as it had been the entire car ride. “Something’s wrong with us, Sarah. We’re not working well together, and people are getting hurt. You were right today, what you said about Belize. And hell, Imani wouldn’t have gotten shot today if we had had our shit together.”

Sarah’s first reply was to point that Imani had been alone with Bryce when he had been shot, so it wasn’t any fault of hers...but she hadn’t planted those charges.

So maybe Bryce had a point.

Even so, it stung, physically, right below her heart. And it made it a little harder to breathe in the back of the company car. She was grateful that she hadn’t raised the sunglasses when she felt the damnable sting of tears prickle against the edges of her eyelids, though a lifetime of training ensured that her face didn’t change. Suddenly, she thought, she was Sam, or Rebecca, or Jenny Burton, and she wasn’t good enough or pretty enough again, and it  _hurt_.

But all she said was, “I see.”

Bryce, to his credit, didn’t try to sell her with empty words about how it was him, not her, about how all things must come to an end. Though she might have appreciated the coddling, some part of her had to respect that, even if most of her resented him.

“If that’s how you feel,” she went on, “then good luck.”

Bryce’s pause seemed a little surprised, like he had expected her to fight it more. Why he would have, Sarah had no idea. He had a point. People could get hurt or killed if they screwed up, and they clearly were. Even if it pained her like nothing else to lose her partner, if he didn’t want to stay, she wasn’t going to hold him back.

“Yeah,” Bryce said, his voice fading off a little. Sarah heard the disappointment in his tone, and that much she agreed with. “Thanks.”

**27 SEPTEMBER 2007  
A FEW KM FROM YAROSLAVSKY TERMINAL, MOSCOW  
05:44 YEKT**

Ninety minutes of shuteye was nothing compared to what she had put her body through in the past thirty-six hours, and Sarah knew it, especially when the sleep had been little more than a light doze thanks to the uncomfortable train bench and the hundreds of little neuroses that had followed her and Chuck out of that bunker. Time and circumstance had ensured that it didn’t matter if they were his or hers; they were there, and they had to be dealt with. She knew that was why the air seemed to tighten oddly in the compartment the closer the train drew to Moscow. She tried not to imagine that it was a noose around their necks.

Chuck toyed with a bit of string that had become unraveled from his mummy-shirt. “Always wanted to see Moscow,” he said. The shake in his voice kept it from being conversational.

“Unfortunately, you won’t get to see much but the train station,” Sarah said.

“It still counts, right?”

She could tell Chuck was forcing himself to remain cheerful. Sarah tried to match the cheer as she picked up her bag from the floor. “It still counts,” she said. She wasn’t sure if she should tell Chuck that he was likely going to get sick of world travel, and more than likely her before too long. She wasn’t sure he had fully grasped the concept that for the foreseeable future, they truly had nobody to trust but each other. Bryce had seen to that.

She looked across the train compartment at Chuck now, really studying him. He did not look good or healthy or even particularly wholesome. His skin was gray with travel fatigue, his hair—longer than she remembered from two years before—stuck up in some places and was crushed against his scalp in others, making him look bedraggled. The gray parka wasn’t doing him any favors. As for herself, she was under no illusions whatsoever. She looked even worse. She’d gotten a good long look at herself in the mirror in the bathroom just a few minutes before. The circles under her eyes made her look like an abuse victim, her skin was even grayer than Chuck’s, and no amount of makeup would fix any of that. Plus, it had been too long since either of them had seen a shower.

Chuck seemed unaware of her scrutiny, for he scooted closer to the window and carefully raised the blind. ”Moneypenny,” he said, and his voice took on that strange partially Scottish accent it had adopted several times over the past few hours on their train ride together, “let me tell you the secret of the world.”

“I’m sorry?” Sarah asked.

Chuck glanced away from the window and at her. Unexpected, that smile flashed. “It’s from ‘From Russia With Love.’ I know we’re on the wrong train for it, but I can’t help but think of it, you know?”

“I’ve never seen it.”

“Oh.” Chuck frowned. She could see him work to brighten up, and wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to go through the pretenses, not for her, even though she appreciated the gesture. “You’re in for a treat, then. You know, when we’re...not on the run.”

“I look forward to it,” Sarah said, eyeing him. Outside the window, train tracks expanded in every direction, letting her know that they were very close to the station. She rose creakily to her feet, grabbing the railing over her head to steady herself when the train suddenly began to lurch. Chuck’s hand shot out to her elbow, but she had already braced herself. Still, she gave him a grateful smile when he looked sheepish.  
Sarah maneuvered him out into the corridor first. It was easy to keep a hand on his back that way, to keep the constant reassuring touch and presence up, even if it wasn’t as logistically smart. Her idea proved smart; the instant other people began to fill the corridor, heading for the platform, Chuck tensed like a board. She rubbed her hand in a circle against his parka and wondered if he could even feel it through the layers. All the while, nerves danced in her belly. This was the first test. Had the CIA figured out she had taken Chuck? Had they been fooled by their ploy of sending Chuck’s watch east instead of west?

She would find out soon one way or another, she supposed.

In front of her, Chuck began to tremble. “Chuck?” she asked.

There was no reply.

“Chuck? Chuck!” Sarah reached around to grab his arm.

He seemed to jolt the instant her hand wrapped around his sleeve. His expression was halfway between paranoid and guilty when he turned to look at her, but she cut him off before he could start babbling out an apology. “You okay?”

“What?” he blinked sluggishly at her. “Oh. Yeah. I’m okay. I’m good.”

He clearly wasn’t.

“You’re covered in sweat,” Sarah said. She doubted he knew his voice was shaking.

“It’s okay, I’m fine.” Chuck’s voice rose a little in pitch. “Parka’s a little warm.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. I really am, I promise.” The last few people between them and the door to the platform stepped outside, and Chuck turned abruptly before she could continue her line of questions. Sarah noticed the death grip he kept on the railing as he stepped down onto the train platform, but he didn’t say anything. He merely hunched his shoulders a little and looked around. There was almost something methodical in the way his head moved as he scanned the platform around them.

It took Sarah a second to realize why it bothered her so much: she was doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same way. Chuck’s paranoia had apparently turned him into a model agent, which was ironic considering that he was now effectively a fugitive.

A fugitive who was apparently free enough to keep running. They weren’t tackled by anybody the instant they set foot on the platform, which meant that they were still maybe a step or two ahead of the CIA. As much as she wanted to let out a sigh of relief at the thought, Sarah knew better. They weren’t out of the frying pan or the fire yet.

So she laced her arm through Chuck’s. He jerked in surprise, but when he looked down at her, his expression, underneath the steely determination not to show his evident fear of being outside, was merely curious.

“Don’t want to lose you,” she said, purposely keeping her voice light. “We’ve got awhile before the next train leaves.”

“Next train?”

Sarah glanced around to make sure there weren’t any security cameras close. “Yes,” she said, turning her head away from the nearest one just in case. “We’ll take the Sapsan up to St. Petersburg. C’mon, I could really use a coffee.” And Chuck could use food that wasn’t reheated Russian noodles.

Before they could take off, however, Chuck put his hand over hers on his arm. It was her turn to jump in surprise, but Chuck didn’t say anything. The determined look somehow seemed to shift, perhaps fortified by the extra contact. It was a tacit sign, a sign he trusted her. He wouldn’t outright say so, not if he wanted to save face in front of her while battling the horrible agoraphobia years in the bunker had forced upon him, but Sarah understood it. It sent a sprout of hope shooting through her, a sprout that made the hell she’d put her body through over the past two days worth it, and the hell she knew was coming over the next whoever knew who long a, little less bleakly terrifying.

It would, Sarah thought, have to do, since right now it was all they had.


	4. Stained

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People are like stained-glass windows.  
> They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,  
> but when the darkness sets in,  
> their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.  
> \- **Elisabeth Kubler-Ross**

**27 SEPTEMBER 2007  
SAPSAN UP TO ST. PETERSBURG  
08:58 YEKT**

Those fucking assholes.

Sarah didn’t look up; she wasn’t sure she would be able to face what she saw in the mirror yet, so she kept her gaze focused with laser sharpness on a blotch in the sink in front of her. If she looked two inches to the left, she would see her thumb resting against the sink’s lip, and she would see it shaking like the rest of her: controlled, minute shakes that only one standing very, very close to her could see. This wasn’t the entire body-quaking, teeth-chattering sort of shaking, this was almost quivering or little spasms, and she had been suffering through it for the past three hours. Ever since Chuck had told her it had been five years.

Not three.

Five years.

Five _fucking_ years.

What the _hell_?

It made her want to hit something. No, it made her want to kill something. Something high-up and official, and messily, too. She wouldn’t ever claim to have a calm center, though she believed in having a certain economy of motion—she had seen too much turmoil in her life to ever believe she could be calm, rational, or normal—but she didn’t think she’d ever experienced this amount of pure fury before.

The famous claim was seeing red, but Sarah knew now that that was wrong. She wasn’t seeing red. She was seeing white. A white haze over everything, explosions of white at the edges of her vision that made her tremble harder, while her heart pounded and her head felt both like a two-ton brick and far too light at the same time, and the back of her throat seized up and her stomach clenched and her hands shook.

Forget kill something. She wanted to _destroy_ something. She wanted to pummel something with her feet and her fists until it was nothing but ashes and atoms, and then she wanted to destroy those, too. She could physically taste the anger on her tongue, like adrenaline.

She’d put up a good face for Chuck. She’d kept her calm; she’d patted his knee and told him that she was going to help him. And she had meant every word she’d said, though maybe the bolstering smile, the one she’d had to use a lot since they had stepped out the front door of the bunker, hadn’t been quite what she had been feeling at the moment.

Now, Sarah kept her head down, her gaze still focused on the sink. She imagined there was probably a line outside waiting to get into the restroom on the Sapsan, but she didn’t give a damn. She would stay standing right here, leaning forward, her hands planted on the sink, until the edge of the maw of fury dulled and she would be able to keep up the calm façade Chuck needed to see right now. It didn’t help that her body was craving sleep like a meth addict without a fix, but she had been through worse and she would get through this.

 _You held it together better than I ever would have if I’d been stuck with limited interaction for three years._

 _Five._

 _They had you there for_ five _years? You told me you’d only been there a year when Bryce and I came to see you._

 _They had me somewhere else before that._

 _What the _hell_?_

They had laws against this sort of thing. They had whole Geneva Conventions against it, in fact. That was why they kept two prisoners to a cell in prisons and only reserved solitary confinement for severe punishment.

Only, apparently, they reserved the same treatment for agents who hadn’t done a single fucking thing wrong.

Another swell of rage started behind her belly button and made her grip the sink to keep her knees from buckling.

She’d made a promise. Agents weren’t supposed to do that. Agents didn’t make promises because they might be ordered to break them at any given moment. But she had. She had looked Chuck full in the eyes and sworn to him that he wasn’t going back into the bunker again.

And the minute the government got their hands back on Chuck, they would put him back. Maybe even in the same bunker, since it had great connectivity and Chuck was comfortable there and nobody would expect it. No, that was stupid: they would want to keep him close, so that scientists could study him and pick apart his brain and figure out why this highly-theoretical Intersect had worked on him when the docket had said it would kill most of humanity.

The thought made her want to shake for a whole different reason. Bryce had taken a _huge_ risk with his own damn friend, hadn’t he?

They would throw Chuck back into a bunker, and this time, he would be guarded and unavailable to anybody, let alone her. There was no other way around it: the Intersect was too valuable, and Chuck had access to too many secrets. She was just a lowly officer in the CIA, and she had burned through most of her contacts already to get Chuck out of the godforsaken bunker. She didn’t have the resources to keep him out of a second one once the government dug their talons back into him.

But, and the little voice was like a tempting poison in the back of her mind, she did have the resources to keep him out of it forever. Keep him away from everything. They could just…run. She knew how to vanish without a trace, she had the training to go off the grid for months or years at a time if she wished. Sure, it would be difficult, but it would be _worth_ it for Chuck to have a real life. She would miss some aspects of her own life, but the sacrifice on her side was actually minimal. Who did she have? She had Bryce, who had blown up the Intersect, risked his best friend, and had sent her on this spiraling path. She had Digital Dave and the boys in logistics, all of whom feared her anyway. There was Carina, but she could see Carina any time. The DEA agent would get a thrill going off the grid to find her just to have a few mojitos together.

Quantified, her life had very little, possibly even less than Chuck’s, and he was the one that had been in the bunker for five damn years. So it wouldn’t be much to run, not for either of them. They’d have each other, which for her was enough. She had no idea if she would be enough for Chuck, but she figured he would prefer having her with him all the time and experiencing the real world, living among people again and remembering how to be human. Would it be enough of a trade for the feeling of constantly needing to look over their shoulders to make sure the government hadn’t caught up?

She knew the answer to that.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Somebody knocked on the door to the bathroom, making Sarah look over. “One moment,” she called back in Russian, making sure she used the Moscow accent. The lack of grumbling on the other side told her that this was the first knock, and she hadn’t missed any in her anger. Even so, her time was running out. She’d been away from Chuck for too long, and she had to make her decision.

Take Chuck, and run. Be branded a traitor. Live in constant fear and paranoia and danger, but Chuck would be _free_.

Take her chances with the government. Be lauded as a patriot. Safety for Chuck, but he would be back in the bunker.

The government really had them both over a barrel. Damned, Sarah thought again, if you do. Damned if you don’t. Why the hell wasn’t there a third option? Chuck hadn’t done anything _wrong_. He’d been a good worker for five years, cheerfully and efficiently doing everything the CIA had asked him to, and this was how they had repaid him. And would continue to repay him.

Why the hell didn’t his rights seem to matter? Why was nobody but her looking out for him? Sarah felt another surge of anger and this time indulged it, driving the side of her fist into the wall. It hurt. She didn’t care.

Wait a second.

Rights.

Agents had rights. That was why they signed contracts; hell, even she had signed a contract with the CIA on her eighteenth birthday, though she knew it was more for show than anything else, that the CIA had made her do many things that would never be recorded on any books anywhere. They did it to put her in the system and on the payroll, but it existed. And if Chuck was anything like her, they would have done the same thing for him. Which meant that he was in the system, which meant…

Sarah looked down at her right hand, finally, at the smart phone she’d lifted from the man sitting beside her in the train compartment.

Maybe there was a third option.

She dialed the number from memory. Just like always, it rang three times and then the line picked up. Nobody spoke.

Sarah waited ten seconds, like she was supposed to. “Good morning, Jean-Claude.” It was a little odd to switch to French after using so much Russian lately, but she managed.

“Ah, hello, Miss Crookshanks. I didn’t expect to hear from you this soon.”

“Fortuitous circumstances.” Sarah very carefully lifted her left hand from its death-grip on the sink and pushed it into the pocket of her jacket. The plan was risky and would probably never work, but the fact that she had one, that there was indeed a third option, made her stand up a little taller. The exhaustion came back stronger than ever, but she had a plan. “We’ll be arriving on the 11:04 Sapsan.”

“Most excellent. Shall I arrange for a car to pick you up?”

“We’ll take a cab. Is everything in order?”

“Retrieving your plane from Warsaw was not easy, but it has been done and will be ready to go for you.”

“Wonderful.”

“It is an interesting color, no?”

“It’s cheerful. I like cheerful.” Of course, she probably wouldn’t feel cheerful ever again, but that was a different matter. Sarah took a deep breath. “I’ll add ten percent to my payment for a favor.”

“No need, Miss Crookshanks. I shall be glad to do any favor you wish, as I believe I still owe you one for Belize.”

Sarah paused. She’d forgotten about Belize. “Thank you, Jean-Claude,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. The exhaustion, both from having slept very little in the past three days and from her fits of fury, coupled with the terror and uncertainty of just how stark and _huge_ everything she was now doing, had made constant tears a veritable option. She felt the telltale prickle and burn of them against the edges of her eyelids and wanted to tell Jean-Claude not to be nice to her right now, that she couldn’t bear it. Instead, she cleared her throat and gathered her will. She let Agent Walker take over and pick up the slack that Sarah-Sam had dropped. “The favor is going to be a strange one.”

“The best favors are, no?”

“Very true. I need you to use your contacts to get a file to an FBI agent.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “That is indeed a very strange favor, Miss Crookshanks.”

“I know.”

“But no matter, it is small repayment for Belize. Whose file, and to which agent?”

It took a moment of searching her memory, but she recalled a Christmas party a couple of years into her time at Harvard. Graham had brought along the recruits staying at the Farm over the Christmas holiday, just for a night on the town and a chance to unwind, and he had made sure they all had drinks, even if Sarah hadn’t been of drinking age yet. She had met Director Lansky there, which had led to him requesting her for his program in the Secret Service the minute she had finished up at Harvard, but apparently that wasn’t going to be her most beneficial contact of the night.

“The agent’s name is Gwendolyn Davenport,” she said now, remembering the introduction and her own curiosity about what an inter-agency liaison did. Graham hadn’t liked the woman at all, but Sarah had. “She works for the FBI, and she runs the—”

“Yes, I know of her,” Jean-Claude said.

Sarah wasn’t surprised. Jean-Claude knew everybody. “And you already have the file in question.”

“You want me to send this Charles Bartowski’s file to Davenport?”

“Yes. No return address.”

“Naturally not. Would you like to include a note?”

“See you soon. Sign it Crimson Radcliffe.”

“Cryptic,” Jean-Claude said, and Sarah could hear a pen scratching in the background. Though the man worked with computers to falsify passport and ID papers, she knew he preferred writing with a silver ballpoint pen, and that his notes were in chicken scratch so hard to read, it was often mistaken for code. “But fitting. Another Harvard alum?”

“You know you’re not supposed to be asking those questions, Jean-Claude.” She had to smile. She’d come up with the code off the top of her head, so she wasn’t offended that it was easy to crack. There was a slight chance that Gwen Davenport might remember their conversation at the Christmas party, but Sarah doubted it. Still, she couldn’t get more specific. Hopefully, she would get a chance to explain. Even more hopefully, she wouldn’t be wearing prison stripes while doing so.

“Ah, yes. I forget these things, it must be my age.”

He had maybe ten years on her. “Or your incorrigibility. You’ll be able to get that file sent?”

“By the time you get to St. Petersburg, it will already be on Agent Davenport’s desk.”

“You’re wonderful, Jean-Claude.”

“I am. I will be waiting for you at the airport, personally.”

“What? Jean-Claude, you don’t have to do that—”

“Nonsense. I want to meet the young man who has so captivated the young Miss Crookshanks.”

“He hasn’t—”

“ _Au Revoir_ ,” Jean-Claude said, and hung up.

Sarah pulled the phone away from her ear. Was it really that obvious, that even her contacts were picking up on her—love was too strong, infatuation too scary, so she settled on _thing_ —thing for Chuck? Granted, Jean-Claude had an edge over the others, as she had contacted him fifteen months before with the request to have paperwork ready for herself and Chuck at a moment’s notice. But _still_.

She pushed that thought aside and focused on what was supposed to be important. She’d set Chuck on a path, hopefully getting his case the attention from a representative that it deserved. She had no way of being sure she could trust Agent Davenport, but she was out in the cold, and beggars couldn’t be choosers. And maybe it was petty as hell, but she enjoyed the fact that she’d set a woman on Chuck’s case that she knew Graham didn’t like. After all that Graham’s administration had done to Chuck, she wanted to do worse.

Chuck. Crap. Sarah checked her watch and swore under her breath, this time in French. She’d left him alone for too long, with a bunch of strangers in the compartment. She’d seen the beginning onset of a panic attack just earlier that day. How the hell could she have forgotten that, and risked it already? She had to get better at pushing her emotions to the side, which meant no more of these little fits.

She indulged herself for only a quick second more to look in the mirror, and wished she hadn’t. “Death warmed over” would have been an improvement.

“Suck it up, Walker,” she told herself, and went back to go see if Chuck was all right.

 **27 SEPTEMBER 2007  
PULKOVO AIRPORT  
11:48 YEKT**

“Um, Sarah, I hate to point this out, but the terminals are that way,” Chuck said, pointing past the line of taxi cabs outside the gate and at the two large terminal buildings in the distance.

The encroaching tiredness made her reply a little short. She could only hope that Jean-Claude had packed the energy bars she had requested into their supplies, as she could use a serious bit of protein. “We’re not flying commercial.”

Confusion spread over Chuck’s face as Sarah climbed into one of the golf carts set off to the side. She would have preferred one of the cars meant for the tarmac, but that was more likely to attract attention, so the golf cart would have to do. Besides, it was easier to hotwire, which she set about doing, grateful that the day wasn’t too cold. Chuck might be sweating a little in his parka, but he didn’t seem to mind the discomfort, and she hated hotwiring engines with cold fingers.

“Are we hijacking this?” Chuck sounded alarmed. “Wait, we’re not hijacking a _plane_ , are we?”

He really did have a lot to learn about being inconspicuous, Sarah couldn’t help but think. His alarm was kind of adorable, though. “No,” she said, and started the engine. It felt nice to sink back into the driver’s seat. Finally, something she could control. She’d been on public transportation ever since they had dumped the snowmobile, and it always made her feel edgy. “I just don’t want to walk all the way to the hangar. C’mon, get in.” She thought about it for a second. “And hold on.”

She needed something to wake her up, after all.

Maybe, she thought when they finally spun into the hangar, going up on two wheels for a split second, she should have gone a little slower. Chuck looked a bit seasick, though he didn’t complain about it. She almost wished he would, as it would be better than his general dolor and hopelessness.

She grabbed an oilcloth from the backseat and wiped down the steering wheel, tossing the rag to Chuck. “Fingerprints,” she told him, and did a sweep of the hangar, checking every sniper-likely corner and the shadows around planes to see if any of them were hiding any agents. She had a feeling they were still ahead of the CIA and the US government, as the perfect place to nab them would have been to box the taxi in, force it into an alley, and black-bag them both, but it never hurt to be too cautious. Her plane sat at the mouth of the hangar, evidently ready to go. Between them and the plane stood a tall man in a black coat.

The exhaustion abruptly ebbed down to a dull ache. Sarah felt the smile spread without realizing it, and took off. Laughing, Jean-Claude caught her in a hug. “You didn’t have to come!” Sarah said, punching his shoulder. She’d switched to French without thinking about it. “I told you I was fine with dealing with customs myself!”

“Sometimes we all need a hand. It’s already taken care of.”

“What would I do without you?”

“Your life would be much emptier,” Jean-Claude said, smiling. “But then, it’s the same for everybody.”

“Were there any problems with the file?”

“None, it’s all taken care of. Gwen Davenport will find it on her desk when she comes in to work in the morning.”

“I owe you one,” Sarah said, and hurried on when Jean-Claude opened his mouth to protest. “I do. It means a lot to me.”

“We’re even. You rescued my wife, I’ve helped your man.”

“He’s not my man,” Sarah said just as Chuck, carrying her rucksack and blinking, joined them. She turned guiltily, but Chuck’s face told her he didn’t speak a word of French.

“Bonjour,” he said.

Okay, Sarah’s brain corrected, maybe one word. And in a terrible accent. But it was still vaguely adorable, given that Jean-Claude was probably the first person he’d talked to in person in years besides her and Bryce.

“Oh, right,” she said, smiling over at Chuck. He didn’t even seem particularly nervous, but that could have been his own exhaustion dulling that edge. The poor guy just looked so worn out. “Chuck, this is Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude, this is—”

“Peter Rogers. It’s an honor to meet you, Pete,” Jean-Claude said. Chuck’s brows drew together as he shook the other man’s hand until Jean-Claude held out an envelope. “Your documents.”

“What?” Chuck asked. Sarah, who had received the same type of envelope from Jean-Claude a few times, watched as he unearthed and dropped a passport and new social security card. They looked completely authentic and even a little worn, as if they’d been used before, which was always a nice touch Jean-Claude added to his forged documents. “What?”

Since he looked at her for an explanation, Sarah cleared her throat. Jean-Claude Gestreaux was the European equivalent to NCS, as he was better with documents that Interpol might see on a daily basis, so a lot of the European-based teams preferred outsourcing for his services rather than trusting the home office. And like any good forger, he dabbled in the gray, which was why she liked him over the techs at the NCS. But she didn’t really want to explain any of that to Chuck, so she kept it simple. “Jean-Claude’s what we call a grease-man. He’s the one that arranged airport security to let us in. The best in the business, right here.”

And since the authenticity of the documents Jean-Claude regularly forged had saved her life a few times, she really wasn’t kidding.

“Always glad to help my favorite face,” Jean-Claude said. “Don’t forget your own papers.”

She was never sure what she was going to get with Jean-Claude, so to see a completely normal name (he’d forged papers for her as Odessa Cleveland once, and for some reason, it had worked perfectly) threw her a bit. “Diana Rogers?” she asked, just to make sure. The last name was the same as Chuck’s, as she had requested, but she had been expecting something less ordinary, like Credenza or Emmaline.

“Clever, isn’t it? You mentioned that he liked comic books,” Jean-Claude said, switching to French. Sarah nearly answered in English, since he was being rude, but the Belgian continued, “So this is the man that has captured the interest of my favorite face.”

“He’s a friend,” Sarah said, raising her eyebrow again. “He’s in a rough spot.”

“The same rough spot he’s been in for…fifteen months?” Jean-Claude’s eyebrow went up in a perfect mimicry of her own.

“It’s complicated. But we do need to hurry.”

“Understandably. The next time you two are in Bruges, you will stop by? Marlene would love to meet the love of her rescuer.”

She must have been tired, as Sarah felt a blush start to heat her cheeks. She willed it back. “Perhaps. Thank you again, Jean-Claude.”

“It was my pleasure. I assume the usual applies? The last time we saw each other was in Hamburg and I’ve never seen his face before?” Jean-Claude nodded over at Chuck, who was still studying the passport.

“Of course.” Sarah reached over very carefully and touched Chuck’s sleeve, hoping he wouldn’t jolt and give away the effects of the bunker even more than the hunched shoulder and constant glances at the door and ceiling already did. The less Jean-Claude knew or realized about Chuck, the better. She trusted him—she wouldn’t have used him otherwise—but there was no way to be sure. He jumped, but it was only a little. She gave him an apologetic smile. “We’d better move out.”

“What? Oh. Oh, sure. Right.” Chuck turned to Jean-Claude, ever polite. They shook hands. “Thanks for the new identity. I appreciate the name.”

“No problem. Sarah—oh, my apologies, Diana.” Jean-Claude steepled his fingers together and made a little bow. “I shall be in touch.”

“I’m sure,” Sarah said, smiling. It would likely be the opposite way, and they both knew it.

“Look for my bill.” Jean-Claude gave her one last grin, his teeth bright against his face, before he seemed to melt back into the hangar. She heard his whistle long after he’d vanished from sight. There, she thought as she turned, keeping a hand on Chuck’s forearm, goes the most cheerful human being I know.

“Our ride’s this way,” she told Chuck, heading toward the plane she’d bought eighteen months before. She loved having a plane of her own, even if keeping it in Europe meant there wasn’t much opportunity to get out and fly it. Bryce had learned helicopter piloting during their training, but Sarah had preferred the traditional flying lessons. It made long flights much easier to know that she could land the plane safely if something were to happen to the pilot. “If I know Jean-Claude at all, it’ll be cleared and ready to go.”

She was right. Jean-Claude had seen to almost every detail: the clothing and luggage she had requested, the fuel, bagged food for the next forty-eight hours, even a couple of bottles of American Coke sitting in the cup holders, perfectly chilled. She climbed into the cockpit and let out a happy sigh. Her body might be so weary she ached, but she had her plane back. She hit the toggle and let the tower know their designation and destination.

“All right,” she said, moving the headphones so that only one earpiece fit over her ears. The depressing thing was that she needed to; if the tower had been alerted to be on the lookout for her plane, she might need every sense she had available. She had registered the plane under another identity, and it was unlikely that the CIA knew about it. They would have already been waiting beside it when she and Chuck arrived, she figured. But it was better to be cautious. “We’re good to go.”

“Just like that?” Chuck asked, and she looked over at him, forcing a smile for his benefit. He seemed more comfortable inside the plane, most likely due to the confined space. And at certain angles, his face seemed oddly disproportionate to the rest of his body. His cheekbones were strangely sharp for somebody so thickly built.

She focused past that. “I’m in black ops. I know how to travel, ah, expediently when I need to.” She was still holding her Diana Rogers paperwork, she realized, so she held that out. “Hold these. Whatever you do, don’t touch anything.”

Chuck nodded. She turned to do the last of the pre-flight checks. “So, uh,” Chuck said, clearing his throat. “Same last name, huh?”

“Yeah. Same last name.” Stupid, Walker, she thought when yet another infernal blush threatened to spread. What had she been hoping? That he wouldn’t notice or comment? And she was being an idiot. This was just a cover, the same as any false identity or cover she had been taking up since before she could walk. There was absolutely no reason to feel self-conscious.

Apparently, she wasn’t the only one. “What’s our, uh, cover? Rocking a little brother-sister identity action?”

She almost wanted to laugh. Nobody in the sighted world would buy them as siblings, not with her porcelain complexion and his much duskier skin tone. “More like husband-wife,” she said, “since we look nothing alike.” She eyed him out of the corner of her eye for a second, and made up the first story that came to mind. “You’re in software, your product is selling well. I’m your extreme sports-loving wife that you met six years ago when mutual friends introduced us.”

“Wow. Detailed. How come you’re the extreme sports-lover in this situation?”

Because I doubt you’ve ever used a hang-glider to break into a Colombian drug lord’s compound and then rappelled down the side of a building, Sarah thought. She figured that probably wasn’t the nicest way to remind him of his time stuck in a bunker, so she said, “Because I’m the one flying the plane.” Since married couples were usually asked about children, she barreled on, “We left the little ones with…Uncle Bryce while you had to be in St. Petersburg to meet with clients. And now we’re taking a second honeymoon through Eastern Europe. I’ve always wanted to, and Pete can’t say no to Diana.”

There, she thought as she taxied out, that was a pretty solid cover story. Though if she felt anywhere near as awful on her actual honeymoon as she did now, it was going to be a short marriage.

Chuck sounded amused. “Can’t he now? Good to know.”

“It is, I think. Hold on.” Chatter sounded through her headset to let her know she was cleared to proceed to the airstrip. She acknowledged it in a Russian accent—no need to make things easier for the CIA later by being an American at this point—and began to taxi. The farther the plane drew away from the hangar, the more she could see the nerves take over Chuck, making him twitch and clench his fist against his trousers.

Finally, the dam broke. “So, um, uh, how good a pilot are you? What are we talking about here? Every once in a while, recreational type flyer or more hardcore stuff? Like, look out, MIG, while I fly upside down, flip you the bird, and maybe get a Polaroid to treasure the memories?”

Well, that was oddly specific, but she didn’t want to look stupid by asking about it, so she just said, “Relax, I’m a great pilot.” She would have said more, but the tower contacted her then, letting her know she was cleared to take off. She acknowledged once more and turned a full-watt smile to Chuck. “Ready for take-off, Chuck?”

He looked scared to death, but also like he was trying not to be. “Sure.”

“Excellent. Let’s do this.” Sarah pushed on the throttle and sent the plane down the runway. Last chance for the CIA to stop them easily, she thought, but there was nothing between them and the end of the tarmac. She felt a spike of adrenaline break through the weariness, pulled back the throttle, and they hit open air. The cloud ceiling was pretty high, and Jean-Claude had left weather and sky reports for her with her pre-flight checklist, so she wasn’t anticipating a bumpy ride—a blessing, since Chuck seemed plenty nervous as the plane did its climb. He stuck by his promise not to touch anything, which she appreciated. She wasn’t a perfectionist, but the less that went wrong on this journey, the better. On the other hand, though, maybe something _should_ go wrong. Things were going too smoothly, apart from her brief rage fit in the train bathroom earlier, and Chuck’s near panic attack. Of course, maybe disaster should wait. She could think of worse places for it than alone in a Cessna over Russian airspace, but not many.

“I’m rapidly changing my mind about this whole Bond thing. I’m starting to think you’re way cooler than Bond,” Chuck said, breaking the silence once she had reached cruising altitude. His knuckles were no longer striped pink and white on the door handle, she saw.

That, as much as Chuck’s words, made her grin, but the grin faltered when she looked down at the parka. The plane was going to get warm fast for him, and there wasn’t anybody but them around, and no reason to freak out. It was time.

“I had Jean-Claude pick up some clothes for you,” she said, keeping her voice completely casual. “They’re in the back. I told him you were tall, but…I don’t know exactly how well they’ll fit.” Or if they would be baggy enough. But anything would be better than the mummy-shirt and parka at this point.

She saw Chuck take a deep breath, but all he said was, “Fantastic.” She had to lean over to avoid being elbowed in the head as he climbed into the back of the cockpit, as he was lanky and ungainly, but she didn’t mind. She heard rustling behind her that indicated he was going through the clothes. For a full ten minutes, she could hear nothing from the back of the plane over the engine noise. She didn’t look back. She desperately wanted to, just to make sure Chuck wasn’t simply sitting in one of the back seats, having given up, but she kept her gaze resolutely forward. She needed Chuck to trust her, and to do that, she needed to do everything she could to earn that trust.

But damn did she want to peek.

“I think we may need to toss my old gear out the window,” Chuck called, sounding a great deal more cheerful than she expected.

“We’ll burn it when we get to Athens,” she called back. She glanced down inadvertently, and spotted the toes of Chuck’s boots, all that she could see of him. “There’s shoes, too.”

She’d been expecting some general acknowledgment; she was not expecting for Chuck to burst out laughing. The noise startled her so badly that she whirled in her seat, already reaching for her gun. “What? What is it?”

Chuck said something. She didn’t hear it.

Oh, she thought, my God.

Her first thought was sheer annoyance at herself for not demanding Chuck remove the parka the minute they left Siberia because—damn. Hot damn, even. Apparently the parka and the ski pants had been hiding _quite_ a bit. She’d heard of the phrase “hiding your light under a bushel” but—damn. Holy hell. That was some light. The version of Chuck that appeared in her dreams occasionally, the dreams she was never telling _anybody_ about, didn’t even come close. Sure, the sweater and jeans were a little baggy, but even that couldn’t hide the fact that Chuck had a body most athletes would kill for, swimmers especially. Apparently the work-out she had interrupted in the bunker wasn’t just a one-off deal, if the toned and muscular build had anything to say about it.

Her second thought was that if she’d thought they’d had problems before, they were nothing compared to now. She was pretty sure she had just forgotten anything and everything in her brain, and that included how to fly a plane. Normally, she might not have been too upset about that, but some sardonic part of her couldn’t resist pointing out the irony of crashing and burning in a horrible accident before getting her hands on a piece of that because she was so frazzled by…that.

And, oh, God, even her thoughts weren’t making any sense anymore. In two seconds, she was going to start drooling.

“What is it?” Chuck asked, and the question broke through Sarah’s haze of shock.

She controlled the reflex to jolt, and hoped that the blood didn’t rush to her face. Apparently she remembered enough about flying a plane to know how to handle the controls, for she automatically changed her grip. “Nothing,” she said, and wanted to wince. Was that her voice? When the hell had she started sucking on helium? And for that matter, when had she turned into an awkward teenager with a huge crush?

She knew the answer to the second, but it didn’t make things any less comfortable. And now on top of everything, there was a steaming hot serving of lust.

She was so doomed.

“You’re staring,” Chuck said.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Oh, come on. You totally were.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chuck raise his eyebrows and wiggle them, grinning as he teased her. The smile escaped before she could stop it. “I wasn’t staring,” she said, and cleared her throat. It felt awful to lie, even over something this minimal, so she added, “Precisely. I’ve just—I’ve never seen you without the Eskimo gear.”

And if I’d known exactly what you looked like without it, she couldn’t help but think, my dreams over the past two years would have been a great deal more…explicit. This really was like her birthday come early for her imagination.

Face it, Walker. If you weren’t moonstruck before, you’re definitely gone now.

Crap.


	5. Sleeping on the Job

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments  
>  Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices  
> That, if I then had waked after long sleep,  
> Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,  
> The clouds methought would open and show riches  
> Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,  
> I cried to dream again.  
> \- _William Shakespeare, _The Tempest_

**27 SEPTEMBER 2007  
10 KM NORTH OF RADOMSKO, POLAND  
18:54 CEST**

This was a bad idea.

No, this wasn’t a bad idea. This was an awful idea. This was an idea on the scale of things like the Hindenburg, and New Coke, and a thousand other historical and pop culture references that Sarah Walker’s tired brain was too muddled and sleep-deprived to provide. She and Chuck had only one thing on their side right now, and that was the element of speed. By the time the higher-ups in Washington got their thumbs out of their collective asses and realized exactly what had gone down with Bryce Larkin and the Intersect at the DNI, she and Chuck would have already vanished into the wind, to lie low until she was dead certain it was safe for either of them to come out again. Or just dead.

Of course, the only way they were actually going to vanish was if they kept moving, which definitely wasn’t going to happen if they kept taking nap breaks and messing with her admittedly-tenuous plans.

She’d made her damned bed the instant she had asked Digital Dave to cover up knowledge of the email transmission to a bunker in Siberia. And that bed, she thought now with a sigh as she hauled herself the last couple of rungs of a ladder that had seen better days and dumped the things she had brought with her onto the floor, was now a musty hayloft in an abandoned barn in the middle of Poland.

She’d slept in stranger places. She wasn’t sure she’d slept with stranger people, though.

This was a bad, bad idea.

Down the ladder, she could hear Chuck fiddling with the little blue plastic pieces, the perimeter alert. Smart, she couldn’t help but think. Handy, too, and she wasn’t entirely thinking about the perimeter alarm. Chuck had been a better help that she had expected throughout their long, hellacious journey. He hadn’t whined at all, for one thing. She had ripped him from a world he had known for three years—five years total, if she was counting this other mysterious bunker—and he hadn’t made a single complaint about that, even though she could see the terror and the panic regularly sneaking up on him.

He was holding it together.

She had made her bed.

This was a bad idea.

She broke out the satchel that Jean-Claude had packed in the plane for them, sustenance for a couple of days “just in case.” The plan had been to eat on the mood, trotting to their next destination, as she hadn’t been able to arrange for the car to be delivered to a barn in the middle of nowhere without drawing suspicious attention. And the less attention she drew right now, the better. The longer she could keep Chuck safe.

It was rude not to wait for him to eat, but it had been forever since her last meal. So she wolfed down a sandwich, and set one aside for him. It wasn’t enough, but she could eat later, after she woke.

Holy hell, she was tired.

She’d been tired before, downright exhausted, actually. The point of the Farm was to break operatives any way they could, and sleep deprivation had been one of the preferred methods. Sleep deprivation was easy to achieve, and it had the bonus of not leaving any marks that could get the CIA in trouble later. Because of that and her extensive time in the field, Sarah knew precisely how long she could stay awake, how long her body could function before her brain started falling asleep on her even in waking state.

She had at least twelve hours left in the can, which was why this was a bad idea.

From downstairs came a wrenching, groaning noise. Sarah reached halfway for her gun before she realized it was Chuck shutting the barn door.

“Sarah?” His voice was rusty, like he didn’t use it all that often, and she figured that was the case.

It also sounded really, really good rusty.

“Up here!” she called.

It was a bad idea to listen to him, to stop and rest even the four grudging hours she had given them both. Even though the dark circles beneath Chuck’s eyes were so stark they looked like he’d been punched in the face. Even though her body was so tired and weary that she was constantly in danger of simply melting to the floor in a gooey puddle. They needed to keep moving. If they stopped for too long, the government would catch up to them. The gravity of what Sarah had done would catch up to both of them, and it would crush them flat.

She had signed her death warrant the minute she had taken Chuck from that bunker.

If she was dead, it meant she couldn’t protect Chuck, and that would mean bad things for him. Already, she could see him struggling, the way he had turned to her more and more often throughout their mad lam together, seeking reassurance and somehow confident she could give him that. She’d wanted to tell him to look somewhere else: she was Sarah Walker, she was a mess herself, she had no business being reassuring to anything.

But he had nobody else. And ever since Bryce had blown up that godforsaken Intersect room, neither did she.

Chuck scrambled up off of the ladder and into the hayloft, his head automatically turning while his eyes scanned the room for egress points and surprises in the corners. He had a habit of doing that, she had noticed, probably because he had been in such a small, regimented space for so many years. Now, he had a need to know where everything was.

It was a little spooky how formulaic he could be about it, though.

Wordlessly, she held out his sandwich. He took it and smiled at her, and she once again thought about what a bad idea this was.

Also, about his shoulders.

Because hot damn, she had not been expecting that.

The man was _built_. She’d interrupted his exercise routine what now felt like years ago (but was really only something like two days), but she hadn’t put it together what the result of that exercise might be. Why the hell had she ever thought he might’ve enjoyed too many cupcakes? That damn parka had definitely been hiding quite a bit.

“Here,” Chuck said, tossing over a small piece of plastic about the size of a credit card. She’d watched him unfold it into a speaker/clip-on ensemble earlier with nothing short of amazement. “You’re probably better off with that.”

She had no idea why, as she wasn’t sure how to work it and there didn’t seem to be any buttons or anything to the device. But she resisted the urge to shrug and said, “Thanks.” That didn’t seem like enough. Idiotically, she added, “Handy,” as she clipped it to the vest Jean-Claude had picked out for her. At least the vest would keep her warm. Nights in this part of the country could get cold, especially this late in September.

Chuck shrugged.

Yeah, Sarah chided herself. That was pretty lame after all.

When Chuck began yanking out handfuls from the hay bale next to him, she grabbed his arm without thinking about it, and then had to not think about just how toned that arm was under her hand.

What the _hell_ is up with you, Walker? Focus!

“We’re going to have to rough it,” she said, apologetic. She’d already hauled him out of his bunker, nearly assaulted him on a train, introduced him to an international forger, and spent the last three hours ogling him whenever he wasn’t looking. And now she was going to cap off the perfect day by making the poor guy sleep on the floor.

She was kind of amazed he hadn’t run away from her screaming by this point.

“No making it look like two people crashed up here. Here. You can use that for a pillow.” She was grateful she’d at least remembered to grab his parka, just in case he got cold. There, she wasn’t a total bitch.

But Chuck didn’t seem particularly upset. “Gotcha,” he said. “What are you going to use?”

She hadn’t been planning to use anything. She actually slept better without a pillow these days. “This isn’t the first time I’ve slept on a barn floor, Chuck,” Sarah said before she could stop to think of how that might sound. Way to rub it in his face, Walker, that you’ve been all around the world while he’s been stuck in a bunker. She sighed at herself as she changed the subject by simply lying down on the spot and setting her watch. “I set my watch, so—four hours.”

There was a pause. She didn’t dare look to see what Chuck was thinking, though. Instead, she waited him out, and eventually he lay down so close to her she could almost feel the body heat radiating off of him. Realistically, he was about a third of a meter away. It was entirely her imagination at work, just as that same imagination had been clocking overtime ever since she had turned around in the plane and seen just how well that sweater and jeans had emphasized things that the parka had hidden from her view.

God, now she was no longer a fifteen-year-old with a crush. She was one precarious evolutionary step away from a steaming pile of lust.

Sarah resisted the urge to pound the back of her head into the hayloft floor. Doing so would wake Chuck, and she could tell by his steady breathing that he had gone right to sleep, the lucky jerk.

What a foolish, idiotic idea this was. Sarah slowly, daringly turned her head. The hayloft wasn’t entirely dark, just gloomy from the evening light that filtered in through holes in the wall, so she could make out details about Chuck in the dimness. As she studied him, lying on his stomach with his face buried in the crook of his elbow, she couldn’t help but wonder, had he had those _shoulders_ two years ago? Because hot damn. Even her (somewhat rare yet very vivid) dreams hadn’t even dared to sculpt shoulders like that.

Before she knew it, Sarah fell asleep.

 **27 SEPTEMBER 2007  
10 KM NORTH OF RADOMSKO, POLAND  
23:03 CEST**

Something was beeping.

And good lord almighty, Sarah Walker was going to kill it. She’d gone through eight different alarm clocks during her days at Harvard, six of those alone in the year after she had taken precision knife throwing lessons at the Farm. Now, groggy in her half-asleep state, she fumbled for the knife-sheath she kept on her leg, intending to add alarm clock number nine to the list of the damned.

Her hand hit something warm. Something warm and that had some give, like flesh.

Instantly, every part of Sarah woke. Situational awareness, they called it. Knowing every detail about everything about the nearby surroundings, no matter how minuscule. Ambient temperature, spatial relations, positioning of one’s body both inwardly and outwardly, both subtle and overt differences in all, how to assess a situation in under five seconds. Keeping her body still so that she wouldn’t alert anybody else that she was awake, just in case danger had showed up while her guard was down, Sarah slit open one eye and then the next. It took a moment to make out detail in the darkness.

Oh, hell.

She’d fallen asleep on her back, over a foot away from Chuck, and she wasn’t the type to shift around in her sleep. Once she was out, she usually stayed put. So there was no possible explanation as to why she had not only moved in her sleep, but had also migrated. And she was no longer on her back.

No, she was on her stomach. Well, kind of on her stomach, Sarah thought, forcing herself to be honest. Partially on her side, mostly on her stomach, but almost all the way on top of Chuck Bartowski. And they were cuddled up just like a couple of puppies. Hell, she even had a leg over his, as if she could burrow as deeply as she could into his warmth.

It terrified her to shift her eyes up toward his face, which she could see without any effort thanks to the fact that she was using his shoulder as a pillow. And she nearly blew it by letting out an “Oh, thank God!” out of relief when she saw that his eyes were closed, those fascinatingly long eyelashes dark against his cheek.

Of course, _of course_ , he opened his eyes.

She had spoken way too damn soon, hadn’t she?

Instantly, confusion reigned over his face. “Uh,” he said, as Sarah froze. But instead of commenting on the fact that she was pretty much smothering him, he looked even more puzzled. “Something’s beeping.”

“What?” Sarah asked before she could stop herself. She jolted. “Oh. Right. That’s my watch.”

“Oh.” Chuck’s eyebrows drew low over his eyes as he thought about this. “Why is your watch beeping?”

“Because it’s time to get up.”

“Already?”

“Four hours, and then we have to move, remember?”

“Oh,” Chuck said again. He gave her a confused look. “I feel like this may have been burying the lead, but why are you on top of me, again?”

Sarah barely suppressed the groan, though she knew it had been ridiculous to hope he wouldn’t ask. She attempted to slide off of Chuck, only to discover, much to her horror, that she was literally stuck.

Chuck apparently took that as a cue. He shifted a little bit, pushing his arms underneath him so that he could prop himself up onto his elbows, his forearms crossed beneath his chest. “I guess it makes sense,” he said, mostly to himself. “After all, I’ve got to be more comfortable than this floor, which, now that I’m thinking about it, is really and incredibly disgusting. And hey, I’m a very cuddly person. I guess you just couldn’t resist.”

Since that was more or less what had happened, thanks to her damned stupid subconscious, Sarah had to suppress not only a second groan but a flush as well as she tried to figure out exactly why she couldn’t get free of Chuck. Her voice as guttural as she said, “Shut up, Chuck.”

He ignored her. He’d already started to develop that habit, which could be a problem. “Are you stuck?” he asked, twisting a little bit (and taking Sarah with him). “What are you stuck on? My belt loop?”

Embarrassingly enough, she was. The sensor receiver had somehow become pinned between them, and it had snagged, surely enough, on the belt loop of Chuck’s jeans. “Looks like,” she said, trying to work the receiver free.

“Here,” Chuck said, reaching back.

Sarah barely resisted the urge to slap his hand away, and as she did so, her hand brushed right over his ass. Now it was Chuck’s turn to freeze. “I got it.”

“If you just—”

“I said I’ve got it.”

“Seriously, if you really—”

She was approaching hysteria. “Chuck! I said I can handle it!”

“I know you can, but…” Chuck actually smiled at her, which made her stop and fumble long enough for him to reach over and unclip the receiver from her vest. He immediately worked the receiver free of his belt loop and smiled at her again.

Sarah wondered if it was possible to die of embarrassment. She slid off of Chuck and immediately busied herself with gathering up the satchel and the sandwich wrappers. She looked up to see Chuck smiling at her a bit drowsily. “What?” she asked, more sharply than she had intended.

He either didn’t hear her tone or he just ignored it. “You’re a cuddler, aren’t you?”

Well, that was rather forward for the same guy that had flushed bright red when her shirt had ridden up on the train, exposing maybe an inch of midriff. Sarah nearly gaped at him.

“I mean, it’s understandable, given that I am, as I claimed earlier, a very cuddly person,” Chuck went on. “But it’s still surprising.”

“Body heat,” Sarah said through gritted teeth.

“What was that?”

Where was the convenient lightning bolt from the sky to kill her when she needed it? “I was using you for body heat,” she said, not looking at him. “That’s all it was.”

Because she refused to look up from her ministrations with clearing up evidence of their time in the hayloft, she didn’t see his grin. But oh, she heard it. “It’s okay, Sarah, you can admit it.”

Sarah peeked at him now from under her eyelashes. “Admit what?”

“That you’re a cuddler.”

“I am not! I was using you for body heat.”

“Sure. Uh-huh.” Chuck’s grin broadened.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Sarah decided. If they kept talking about it, she might do something like explode or act on all of the adrenaline and fear that was still pushing her. And Chuck was in no way mentally prepared to handle being the outlet for that sort of outburst. She slung the satchel over her shoulder and crawled over to the ladder. Her body was still screaming for sleep, and for more warmth since the air was almost frigid after being surrounded by Chuck’s body heat. “We need to get moving.”

“What? Okay, sure.” Chuck picked up his parka pillow and stuffed it under his shoulder so that he could follow her down the ladder. He watched her as she carefully climbed onto the first rung. She in no way trusted the ladder not to kill one or both of them, but she didn’t actually have any other choices to get into the hayloft. At least she didn’t have a fear of heights.

“Hey, Sarah?” Chuck asked.

She paused. “Yeah?” Was that nervousness in his voice? Was he on the verge of another attack? She’d seen three threaten and pass as Chuck worked to calm himself, and it was rather impressive that he was holding on this well, but she had to keep an eye on him for signs of a larger episode.

But Chuck didn’t look particularly freaked out now, since he was grinning at her. “Just wondering, but can I be the big spoon next time?”

For one tempting, devilish moment, Sarah considering just telling him the truth, that he was more than welcome to do far more than spoon her. She didn’t want shock erasing that grin, even if it was smirk-y and aimed at her, though. So she just gave Chuck a level look. “Let’s go.”

Chuck’s laughter followed her all the way down the ladder.


	6. Be Still My Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.  
> - Homer

**28 SEPTEMBER 2007  
DANCING ZORBA’S BAR  
19:23 BST**

Randy was late.

At any other point in time, Sarah would have been antsy, sitting on the edge of her barstool and constantly checking her watch. Right now, however, she was simply too exhausted to expend any amount of energy beyond what it took to keep an eye out for any CIA or NSA types around her, and to lift her drink to her lips. Her entire body felt like it had been made out of stone and then slagged in an explosion, and built back up into something vaguely Sarah Walker-shaped.

She’d left Chuck at the safe-house, which made her nervous as hell, but it couldn’t be helped. He would be fine. Chances were, he would collapse from the same weariness that was even now making Sarah’s world seem out of focus. There wasn’t anybody else around him and the bungalow was fairly small, so there wasn’t too much that could inspire a panic attack, and she didn’t think the CIA had found out about her safe-house. She’d kept it buried about as deeply as the identity attached to her plane.

Still, Randy was late, and that was annoying. She needed to be with Chuck. There was a way she could still be with Chuck, a little voice pointed out, and she’d turned it down. He’d gotten all protective because he thought Randy might be a threat, and he’d wanted to come along. It was cute. If she’d said yes, she could be worrying for a whole different reason, Sarah told herself. She needed to suck it up.

She took another drink; the beer felt suspiciously good sliding down her throat. Great. On top of everything else, she likely had a cold coming on. Not all that surprising, given the hell she had put her body through, but annoying. She needed to stay healthy for another week, maybe a week and a half, until they could get back into the States and approach the agents she trusted.

Then she could have her breakdown or her body could shut down like some kind of sci-fi robot, but until then, until Chuck was safe and whole and healthy, she needed to keep it together.

“You know, people are usually happier than that to see me, but I get it,” a voice said behind her. Sarah didn’t tense. She’d seen Randy come in. She looked over her shoulder, lifting one eyebrow as he grinned at her. “I did, after all, crash your car when you were sixteen.”

“My fault for ever letting you drive,” Sarah said, rising to her feet. She hugged him and ruffled his hair as she pulled away. “What’s this?”

“Hair gel, mostly.” Randy moved a hand over the spikes tufting out from his head.

“You look like Billy Idol.”

“Unfortunately, that’s normal.” Randy nodded at the bartender, obviously comfortable with the bar. Sarah could understand why: it was dark and the music wasn’t blasting, perfect for any conman who might need to watch for people after him. She imagined he knew at least three egress routes off the top of his head. “The spikes are a lifestyle choice.”

“Uh-huh.” Lifestyle choice meant that Randy was on a grift. And perhaps the Billy Idol dig had been unfair, as Randy was an albino and therefore didn’t have much of a choice. “Do I want to know?”

“Probably not, especially if you want to stay out of the life. Though I’ve got a friend that…”

Sarah wrinkled her nose. “I’m out, I’m out. No more.”

“Your loss.” Randy’s beer appeared in front of him and he took a long swallow. “I was surprised to get your call.”

“I was surprised to find you in Greece. Get tired of Toronto?”

“Vancouver.” Randy’s smile was quicksilver and charming, which had helped him score hundreds of deals of all types over the years, and even more so, had helped him gain—and lose—quite a few lovers. Sarah had told Chuck he was an ex-boyfriend in order to have to explain how she knew him. She wondered what Randy would think of that…or what Randy’s current boyfriend, who had come into the bar with him and was sitting by the jukebox in the corner, would think of it. “I like having a lot of movie stars around, you know.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Randy took a long drink of beer and carefully set the glass down, his spindly fingers playing with the rim. “Was sorry to hear about your dad.”

“Thanks.”

“He’ll be out soon?”

“Less than six months.”

“Ah.”

Sarah hoped he wouldn’t say more; her father would never be a topic she wanted to discuss, even with somebody who understood. Randy’s own father had been a conman just like Jack, though a heart attack had claimed his life before Rolf Kaiser could end up in prison. Randy had gone on to be a protégé of Jack’s, and at eighteen, he and sixteen-year-old Sarah had gotten along pretty well. The ironic thing about it all, Sarah thought, was that they probably had more in common now that she had become a spy than they had back in the old days.

“Word is, you got religion,” Randy went on.

“I got something,” Sarah said, and she wasn’t lying. She had a serious case of lust fever. Thankfully, it had dwindled with the advent of a little sleep on the ferry, but the strangest things could still set her off. It had kept the past day…interesting. “But don’t worry, this isn’t a sting or anything.”

“That’s what they all say. And then you end up in an orange jumpsuit with a guy named Big Mikey wanting to make friends.”

“If you’re in a jumpsuit, so am I,” Sarah said.

Randy eyed her a moment longer, and Sarah stayed still. Old acquaintances or not, her time as a federal agent might have hit the old grapevines, which meant that she was lucky Randy had even taken her call. He was trained to read body language by his own upbringing, so right now was her trial by fire, as it were, to prove that she really wouldn’t throw him in prison.

Apparently, she passed the test. Randy picked up his beer, but didn’t drink. “Got what you wanted.”

“Yeah?” It was a relief. She hadn’t packed nearly enough weaponry for her taste, since going on plane flights with weaponry always raised red flags, no matter what sort of documentation she carried. “Any trouble?”

“Kid stuff.” Randy waved a hand. “Also, I managed to get my hands on something you’re going to love.”

“Oh?” Interest had her perking up as Randy reached into his messenger bag and withdrew a flat black case about as long as his hand. “What’s this? A pressure syringe?”

“Fits between the fingers, so you can hide it with a closed fist. Well, a loosely closed fist.” Randy pulled a small silver device out, and Sarah saw that it held two rings to slip one’s fingers through. Mounted between them was a short, thin needle. “My friend Monty’s design. We use it on security guards when we can’t carry tranq pistols. The juice inside is pretty effective—takes about a quarter of a second, and it lasts for most of an hour, so don’t prick yourself by accident. Extra cartridges in the case, too.”

“Wow,” Sarah said as Randy replaced the syringe in the case and handed it over. “That’s pretty handy. It’s safe?”

“I’d use it on my own mother.”

“You don’t like your mother.”

“I know. But it only leaves you with a headache, nothing harmful. Monty’s a genius when it comes to inventing. Helps to have one on your crew.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said, taking a sip of her beer. “I’ve got one now, too. He’s…” Extremely hot. “Pretty great. And the knives? You got the knives?”

“I did.” Randy handed over a folded piece of cloth that felt rigid at certain points. Sarah didn’t check, but she figured it was probably a cloth sleeve for the throwing knives she had requested, the same knives she had felt almost naked without over the past few days. “Still using them, I see. You any good with them?”

“I’m decent. How are the extraction plans? Which airports did you choose?”

“We’ll go through Berlin. My contact is willing to help us avoid any scrapes. Your paperwork solid?”

“Got it from the best in the business.”

“Awesome. I’ll need copies of it.” When Sarah gave him a “not happening” look, Randy shrugged. “We can do that at the last minute if you’re more comfortable that way.”

“I am.”

“Understandable. You always were paranoid. It’s just you and one other?” Randy pulled out a complicated-looking smart phone. Chuck, she thought, would drool. Whenever she and Bryce had had a new tech toy delivered to the bunker for a mission, they had usually heard about it in great detail, until Chuck of course disassembled the pieces and made it into something else. He’d spent two hours in Thessaloniki playing with the digital camera she’d purchased in order to blend in more as a tourist, uncovering features she would never have even thought to look for.

“It is,” she said. “And it’s imperative that I stay with him the whole time.”

“Seats together, got it. Aisle or window?”

Sarah paused. Chuck’s longer legs would mean he would probably prefer the aisle, but he would be more exposed. “Aisle, for me, with him next to me.” That way, she thought, finishing off her beer, they would literally have to go through her to get to Chuck.

Randy made a note on his phone. “You’re comfortable staying in Athens for a day or two?”

Sarah had to think about it. She’d set up the bungalow, and she had one emergency location since Athens had been an original stopping point on the egress plan for Chuck and Bryce. Both locations were set up for three people—there was a sleeper cot tucked in the closet at the bungalow, and rations and food for three in each one of the refrigerators—though Bryce didn’t know about them. Hopefully, neither did the CIA or NSA. Besides, changing her plans right now would be costly. The bungalow and the backup plan would have to do.

“Yes,” she said. “But not for longer than that.”

Randy’s fingers stilled over the screen and he looked over at her, watching her through the corner of his eye. “Are you in trouble?”

Though she could pull it off, she knew better than to lie to him. Too many things rested on the wrong flick of an eye or shrug of a shoulder. “It’s complicated.”

“So it’s your companion that’s in trouble?”

“Randy, you know I’m not going to tell you what’s going on. The situation is messy, and it’s only going to get worse unless we get to D.C., and quickly.” Why was it that the men in her life were suddenly becoming overprotective? Randy, she could understand—the last time she had seen him, she’d been an awkward and shy teen—but Chuck? He’d seen her storm multiple compounds with only an MP-5 and her wits. He knew she could take care of herself. She gave Randy a grateful look, even if his over-protectiveness wasn’t wanted. “I really do appreciate the help.”

“It’ll be nice to work with you again,” Randy said. “Just like old times.”

“Definitely,” Sarah said, and she meant it. “How can I get in touch?”

Randy handed over a burn phone. “No way to trace it. If anybody but me calls you, dump it and run. I’ll leave you a note, usual way of contact.”

“Where?”

“Acropolis. They’ve got a really nice ladies’ bathroom, I just love the soap they use.”

Sarah smiled, though her muscles were so weary it felt as though her face might crack. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a Euro note that would cover both of their drinks, and the beer Randy’s boyfriend in the corner had been nursing. “Got it. I’d better get back. Thanks again, Randy.”

“No problem.”

She got a few steps before curiosity made her turn. “Okay, I give. What’s the con?”

“No con. Well, mostly no con.”

Sarah’s eyebrow went up.

“Hey, maybe you aren’t the only one that got religion.” Randy’s grin came back full force. “I have a day job now. EMT.”

“You’re kidding.”

“God’s honest truth. I save lives.”

Sarah was quiet for a moment while she processed this. Then she nodded. “Good for you. I’m proud. And I look forward to your call.”

It really was strange, she thought as she slipped into the warm Athens night, how much people could change, and how much they seemed to never change at all. How many years had it been since she had seen Randy? A decade? More? Seeing him again was like it had been just yesterday, whereas it had only been two years since the last time she had seen Chuck, before three days before, and it seemed like  _everything_  had changed.

It took her an hour to get back, though the bungalow wasn’t far. She used a convoluted route, different Metro lines and bus routes, keeping her face down in a French novel she’d bought at a stand earlier so that it wouldn’t be tagged on the cameras. Once she was sure she wasn’t being followed, she approached the bungalow. The lights were on, which made her draw up short. How could Chuck be awake? The only way she was upright now was due to the fact that she had kept moving, and she knew that Chuck had had less sleep than she had since the cuddling incident—which still made her feel a bit warm to think about—in the hayloft in Poland, as he hadn’t catnapped in the car or on the ferry. Cautious now, she moved forward to where she could peek through the window.

He  _was_  asleep, she saw, bundled beneath the covers so that she could see only the back of his head and his neck. She started to smile to herself, but stopped short. Was that…yes, it was. He had set his little perimeter alarm; she could see the receiver dangling from the lampshade, where it would be in easy reach.

Well, damn it. She didn’t want to wake him if he was finally getting some much needed rest, and she especially didn’t want to wake him that way if that alarm was as shrill as she suspected it might be. She sighed to herself and pulled out the sensor alarm panel. She’d had the place wired to alert her whenever somebody forced entry. One of the perks was that she could lock the doors and windows remotely. She hit the unlock switch and, trying to be quiet, forced the glass up. After the day she’d had, crawling in through her own window like a teenager sneaking in really just capped it.

She shut the window behind her. All she wanted was a shower and to eat most of whatever was in the fridge. And to sleep as long as her body would allow. She decided to eat first, and so killed two birds with one stone, stuffing feta cheese and olive bread in her mouth as she turned the water on in the shower. Thankfully, a call to the maid service she kept in Greece had stocked up the fridge prior to their arrival, which was one less thing that she had to worry about for now. She headed back into the kitchenette to grab yet another hunk of olive bread, and pulled up short.

Oh, my God, she thought, not for the first time that day. Is he  _serious_?

Not only had Chuck cleaned up the two days of travel grime, but from this angle, it looked like he slept in the nude. He had rolled over, perhaps hearing the noise from the pipes, so that the blanket fell across his abdomen rather than his shoulders. With the lamp still on, Sarah could see every bit of definition in his shoulders, chest, and abdomen in nice, clear detail, including the sprinkling of chest hair that tapered down into—without a word, she pivoted on her heel, stalked to the bathroom, and twisted the hot water knob to “off.”

This was ridiculous. Sarah stripped out of her clothes, ripe thanks to the fact that she’d worn them through seven or eight different countries, and jumped into the cold stream of water, hoping it would do something about the inferno the bungalow had become. The cold bit into her system, but she welcomed it. And even though it would probably wake Chuck, she indulged herself: she pounded her head into the tiles. Repeatedly.

This really, really had to stop. It’s exhaustion, she told herself. She was tired, and edgy, and stressed, and her mind did strange things to her whenever that happened. Past experience was more than proof enough: during a botched mission in Nigeria, she had hallucinated sitting down to the Last Supper with a bunch of Fraggles, a TV show she had watched as a young girl in crappy motel rooms while her dad stole from people. It hadn’t even seemed strange, and it had nothing on the image of a shirtless Chuck now permanently and happily burned into her brain. Would she see that every time she closed her eyes for the rest of her life? It seemed likely, and problematic. In addition to negating the shower she was currently freezing through, it would probably get them both killed. Either the CIA would find them based on her dazed look alone, or she was going to mindlessly into traffic, and Chuck would follow because he trusted her.

Pull it together, Walker.

“He really is trying to kill me,” she muttered to herself, and reached for the shampoo. The rest of the shower was an experiment in self-control and willpower as she tried not to imagine what it would be like just to run her hands over his—she gave up and rested her forehead against the cold tiles. It was going to be hell to climb into bed, knowing that Chuck was wearing either nothing or very little under the sheets. She wasn’t sure the Farm had ever taught anything that could possibly counteract this sort of torture.

Eventually, she dragged herself to shut off the water and towel-dried her hair. She stuck with brushing her teeth and using the moisturizer Jean-Claude had packed, a shortened version of her nightly routine. And, wearing the shorts and a tank top that would have to suffice for sleep gear, she took a deep breath and wandered out. Chuck had both helped and hurt the situation by pulling the blanket up around his shoulders again. It deprived her of the view, but it did wonders for her self-control.

She turned out his lamp before she crossed to her side of the bed. The smarter, more prudent thing to do would be to drag out the spare cot, but she didn’t have the energy and it might wake Chuck. So she took a deep breath and crawled into bed alongside Chuck, careful to keep her movements slow so as not to wake him. He stirred, but mumbled something and turned his back to her.

“If I didn’t like you so much, I’d probably hate you,” Sarah said, giving him a dirty look as she tucked one of her new throwing knives under her pillow, well out of his reach. She made sure to keep a foot of space between them when she curled up, all but melting into the mattress thanks to her tiredness. Nearly two years without sex on top of her exhaustion, and now she was sharing a bed with the guy she’d had multiple sex dreams about in a safe-house on the run from the US government and a rogue spy. If this had been a romance novel, she had no doubt that they would have defiled every flat surface in the place by now—not that she would mind—but since it was real life and real life sucked sometimes, she reached up and shut off her lamp and fell asleep.

 **29 SEPTEMBER 2007  
ATHENS, GREECE  
6:19 BST**

“Oh, God.”

The moan cut through the nothingness, and in that instant, Sarah was awake. She was sitting up before she knew it, searching the bungalow for any sign of intruders or an attack. “What is it? What?” Then seeing only Chuck lying next to her with his face in a pillow, she added, “What?”

Chuck mumbled something. Oh, God, Sarah thought. Was he hurt? Had something happened? She grabbed his shoulder and turned him over. “What is it?”

“Uncle! Uncle!”

In her panic she’d pulled too hard. But Chuck didn’t seem to be hurt—save the damage she’d just done—and there wasn’t a tac team inside the room, waiting to take them by force. She put the knife she hadn’t realized she’d been holding back into its sheath underneath the pillow. Early morning gloom filled the room, which told her they had been asleep for awhile. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“Just a flash,” Chuck said, rubbing his shoulder. He reached over to pick something up off of the floor on his side of the bed. As he did so, Sarah noticed something she hadn’t the night before: he was definitely wearing boxers. And his back muscles were just as well-defined as the rest of him. It just kept getting better. She managed to yank her gaze up to his face just in time when he turned and handed her something. A menu of some type for Gio Pete’s, done in bright red and green. “Something on this incited a flash about Project Omaha. You ever heard of it?”

“No, but…” Project Omaha? She had run an off-the-books mission in Omaha with Bryce three years before, their first mission together. But it had been called Project Headland, not Project Omaha and—holy hell. She hadn’t been anywhere near a place like Gio Pete’s, and this menu definitely hadn’t been in the bungalow when she’d done her sweep the night before. Ice colder than her shower flooded through her. She rolled to her feet, automatically adopting an attack stance. “Where did you get this?”

“It was—it was on the nightstand.”

Sarah swore, and realized she’d spoken aloud when Chuck practically fell out of the bed, asking, “What is it?”

“Get dressed.” Stupid, Sarah, stupid, not to wake up and do routine sweeps of the room to make sure they were safe. Had she even checked last night when she’d come in? God, she was an idiot. She’d let her guard down. She had no idea what game their mysterious visitor was trying to play, and right now, she didn’t give a damn. They needed to  _go_ while they could.

“What?”

“Get dressed!” Ignoring modesty, she stripped out of her shorts, grabbing up the first pair of pants in the suitcase Jean-Claude had packed. She ignored the need for a bra and instead yanked on a long-sleeved tee over the sleep tank. “The room’s been breached, we need to move!”

She stuffed her clothes back into her suitcase and raced around, yanking the bedclothes taut, sweeping up the crumbs. She tossed a cloth to Chuck to handle fingerprints while she checked out the windows, searching for snipers or anybody that might want to snatch them.  _How_  had she managed to forget that they had not only the government, but Bryce Larkin, who knew her every reaction like his life depended on it (and had, several times), and who could always beat her at chess, after them? She should have done better. She needed to do better. For whatever reason, they had a brief reprieve, but they needed to get somewhere crowded, where they could get lost, and regroup.

“C’mon,” she told Chuck as they grabbed their bags and ran for the sedan she’d had the housing service rent for her use. She took the driver’s seat.

“Where are we going?” Chuck had his hands already clenched on the dashboard.

“Somewhere public. Hold on.” Sarah didn’t peel out of the parking lot, though it was a close thing.

 **29 SEPTEMBER 2007  
THE ACROPOLIS  
08:20 BST**

Perhaps it was a subconscious answer to Randy’s preferred message stop the night before, but after driving around for an hour and picking them up some breakfast, Sarah chose the Acropolis to gather her bearings and to figure out if they were being watched. There was already a crowd, perfect for her needs and perfectly horrible for Chuck. She could see it getting to him in the way his hands twitched, and he inched closer to her with every minute, but it couldn’t be helped. The first chance she got, she promised herself, they would go somewhere dark and quiet, and let Chuck regain his equilibrium, but until she knew if they were being followed or not, he would just have to tough it out. And he was doing well: he’d even joked around with her about their cover identities, at least putting on the front of a tourist indulging his wife. They were Pete and Diana Rogers again, on a second honeymoon throughout Europe, rather than Chuck Bartowski and Sarah Walker, on the run from everybody and everything.

He’d called her sweetheart. It had sounded unnatural.

She scanned the crowd around them as they moved along, heading toward the Erectheion, but nobody seemed like they were overly interested in either her or avoiding her gaze. Still, the menu from Chuck’s nightstand made her jittery. It was just  _strange_. Why would somebody leave that? What the hell was Project Omaha and what did it matter? And if this person had the capability to sneak into the bungalow, why hadn’t they simply snatched Chuck at that point?

Unless they didn’t want to do that. But  _why_? What the hell was the endgame?

You know who left the message, Sarah, her brain chided. If Bryce knows enough to steal and destroy the Intersect, he knows how it works. He knows what to do to trigger a flash, and you’ve never understood his endgame anyway.

No, Sarah told herself, rebelling against even the thought. It just wasn’t  _fair_. She had made all of these plans, and she had done her damndest to keep them from Bryce, and he had still followed them all the way to freaking Athens, and it just wasn’t fair. Her plan wasn’t supposed to fall apart like tissue paper in the rain.

She tightened her grip on Chuck’s arm, and Chuck glanced over. He’d picked up some sun the day before, but the pallor of the bunker still clung to him, making him look ghost-like. There was also a sheen of panic sweat on his forehead, due to all of the people around. But he still gave her a reassuring smile, which made her heart contract tighter than usual. She was the one that was supposed to be comforting _him_ , not the other way around.

Why did Bryce want him to know about Project Omaha? Why was that important, and why hadn’t Bryce simply taken Chuck while Sarah was away? It scared Sarah on some elemental level that she didn’t want to acknowledge, more than that initial spurt of fear she’d suffered when Dave had first told her that Chuck had been involved with the Intersect theft, that Bryce was able to slip in under her nose and could take Chuck away at any second, knowing that the other agent was in Athens with them, and knowing that Sarah could probably do very little to stop him.

And it pissed her off. Bryce was supposed to be her partner, and she was supposed to trust her partner. She wasn’t supposed to fear what he was capable of.

“You remember what we talked about,” she told Chuck, keeping a grip on his arm, “about if we get split up at any point today.”

Relax, she told herself. She’d gone over it five times in the car.

But Chuck didn’t roll his eyes, like she might have. He looked puzzled, and lost. “I still don’t understand. Why do you want me to go to an Air Force Base rather than wait somewhere for you to find me?”

Should she lie? With every day she was off-grid, the target on her head grew larger, and Bryce being here meant he could second-guess her every move. He’d have some trouble with the Air Force or an embassy if Chuck could get there, Sarah knew. She decided that Chuck deserved some version of the truth.

“Because I might not be able to make it to a meet-up and what you have in your head is a valuable piece of government property. Your protection isn’t worth the risk of waiting for a meet-up.”

She saw Chuck jolt. “Sarah,” he started to say.

She didn’t let him finish. “Diana.”

“Are you in more danger than me right now? Like they’ll shoot you on sight?”

It wouldn’t be on sight. They’d follow her for a little while, separate her from Chuck somehow, and her death would be a quiet one, somewhere in a back alley. She didn’t really fear death as much as she suspected others did, but now that she had something to live for, the thought spread a greasy film throughout her midsection. She looked away. “Just enjoy the architecture.”

Chuck didn’t move. He had  _that_ look on his face again. She’d seen it the day before when he had tried to insist on going with her to Randy. It was a stubborn, heels-dug-in expression that told her that mountains would move before Chuck would. And it was…pretty damn effective. Her heart started pounding. The man would be an excellent interrogator if he ever chose to be; it was impossible to face down that expression and lie. “Answer the question,” he said, turning toward her.

She couldn’t.

“They think you’re rogue,” Chuck went on, his voice different. Deeper. He’d pulled his shoulders back, too, so that he seemed taller than ever. “They can’t kill me because I’ve got the only copy of the Intersect in my head, but you, they’ll see you as expendable.”

More than expendable. A liability. “I’m off the grid. My partner stole a valuable piece of government property, and three days later, I’m off the grid with the only remaining copy. Right now, by all appearance, I’m guilty of high treason.”

Apparently, the Chuck that freaked out at the thought of gunplay and danger was long-gone. This version of him standing in front of her now seemed more experienced, colder. Definitely more determined, from the way he stared at her, his look unreadable. Finally, he spoke. “Okay.” He moved around her.

She grabbed his arm and yanked. He obviously didn’t like that, given the way his jaw firmed, but she didn’t care. “Okay, what?”

“I’m going to the Air Force Base, I’m giving them the phrase you told me, and I’m turning myself in. And I’ll tell them you had nothing to do with it, and that you were innocent. I appreciate the help, but there’s no way I’m letting you get killed trying to keep me from getting thrown back in a bunker.” Chuck’s eyes seemed to say what the rest of him wouldn’t: try to stop me. I dare you. “I’d rather die alone in a bunker than let you get shot protecting me?”

Sarah’s heart started to pound for an entirely new reason, and she swallowed. No, was all she could think. He couldn’t do this, not after everything she’d done to get him out of Siberia. She straightened her shoulders, planting herself in his way. “Chuck, it’s my job to protect you.”

“No way, Sarah. No way are you getting killed because of something Bryce or I did.”

“I’ve been a field agent for years. I can take care of myself.”

“I don’t doubt that. I’m just not willing to risk it.” Chuck broke free and tried to move around her, but Sarah hadn’t aced the footwork part of her boxing course for naught. She side-stepped into his path, eyebrows lowering when Chuck’s eyes flashed. “Get out of my way.”

“I know fourteen ways to knock you unconscious without either of us moving right now. And I’ll do it,” Sarah said, digging into her pocket with her free hand for one of those ways. She couldn’t let Chuck turn himself in; she’d made him a promise, and she would keep it come hell, high water, or stupidly misplaced nobility. “I swear I will.”

Instead of backing down, however, Chuck scoffed and looked around at the crowd around them. Sarah felt her blood begin to boil. Why the hell didn’t he  _understand_? “Here? Try it.”

She could think of things she wanted to do less, but it was a very short list. And Chuck, she saw, was not going to budge on this stance. It normally would have been heartwarming and made her feel fluttery, but not right now. Not when Chuck was in danger, too. So she gave him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Chuck got the question out before Sarah lashed out with one hand, stabbing the pressure syringe Randy had given her at the bar the night before into the side of his neck. He flinched, his look going from stubborn to confused, and then finally slack as the drug hit his system. Sarah nearly let out a curse as he toppled like a building, thankfully toward her. She let his weight crash into her, and hoped it looked natural. A deep breath, all that she required, and she switched to her Southern Belle accent. “Oh, mah gawd! Pete? Pete! Are you okay?”

He looked so rough, lying there unconscious on the asphalt outside the ruins, black bags under his eyes and face slack. She didn’t have to fake most of her worry as she played to the crowd, freaking out and pretending that “Pete” had low blood sugar. She insisted on being the one to call the EMTs herself.

When Randy and his boyfriend finally arrived, she was kneeling by the still-out Chuck, being comforted by the Greek authorities who worked at the Acropolis. “Didn’t think you’d use the syringe this soon,” Randy muttered after she’d tearfully thanked her supporters and was trotting alongside the men in EMT uniforms pushing the stretcher and Chuck to the ambulance. “Eager much?”

“Had a situation.”

“Who is he?”

“My traveling partner. We had a disagreement.”

“Oh. He got off easy, then. Our disagreements used to end with a right hook.”

“They did not!”

They reached the ambulance. “Where am I taking him?”

It hurt to give up secrets, but she didn’t have much of a choice, so Sarah listed off the address to her second safe-house. “Take the long way,” she said. “I’ve got to check my car for trackers and maybe lose a tail, but I’ll be there. Circle the block until I get there?”

“Got it.”

“And Randy?”

“Yes?” Randy, in the process of climbing up into the back of the ambulance, looked down at her.

“When he wakes up, tell him I’ll see him soon. And be nice. He’s…he’s had it rough.” And he’s all I’ve got right now, Sarah added.

“Will do.” Randy closed the door, and the ambulance pulled away. Though it was wasting time she didn’t have, Sarah watched it go.

I’m sorry, Chuck.


	7. Strike Another Blow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With a bitter cry of sorrow,  
> And a dark and angry frown,  
> Looked that band of gallant patriots  
> At their gunner stricken down.  
> “Fall back, comrades, it is folly  
> Thus to strive against the foe.”  
> “No! not so,” cried Irish Molly;  
> “We can strike another blow.”
> 
> Quickly leaped she to the cannon,  
> In her fallen husband's place,  
> Sponged and rammed it fast and steady,  
> Fired it in the foeman’s face.  
> Flashed another ringing volley,  
> Roared another from the gun;  
> “Boys, hurrah!” cried gallant Molly,  
> “For the flag of Washington.”  
> \- **William Collins** ,  _Molly Maguire at Monmouth_

**5 OCTOBER 2007  
SECURE HOLDING FACILITY, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA  
09:43 EDT**

They were being punished. Sarah knew it, the administrators knew it, and she knew they knew she knew it. Putting Chuck and her in the holding facility in Langley’s basement was a slap on the wrist. Letting them wait a day, a scolding. Going on three days...they were in trouble, and the bosses wanted them to know it. Sarah might not have minded, except that her world existed in a vacuum, and she was scared, and tired, and terrified. Somehow, the CIA had managed to conceal knowledge of Chuck’s being back in the country from Gwen Davenport, which meant that he wasn’t going to receive representation, which meant that the CIA and the NSA were going to steamroll everything and throw Chuck back into the bunker. He was too valuable for the classic CIA “accidental death” cover-up, after all.

As for her, she saw two possible endings. One, a prison cell, solitary confinement, ironically similar to the bunker they’d kept Chuck in for years. The other, and more likely, the dark alley, the bullet she wouldn’t see coming. No accidental death story for her, since there was nobody in her life to fool.

She’d never outright feared death, but she was scared now. The past two years had been eye-opening. She wanted to do more than survive now. She wanted to experience. And if she were really being honest with herself, she didn’t want to experience alone anymore.

She sat on her cot, legs pulled into a half lotus and wrists resting face-up on her knees, but she wasn’t attempting to meditate. She’d already gone through a Tai Chi routine, sit-ups, push-ups, butterfly kicks, and as much of a cardio routine as it was possible to work in the small cell. She’d heard Chuck doing the same in the next cell over, though he’d been quiet for over an hour now, apart from kicking the wall. She wanted to snap at him to stop.

She didn’t. If it helped him feel connected to something, she wasn’t going to begrudge him that. Hell, she might even join in, given time. At least it was something to  _do_.

Chuck had been quiet. She wanted to ask him about it, but they weren’t the only ones in the detention center, so on top of the boredom and the cabin fever and this newfound fear of death and lifetime imprisonment that she absolutely hated, she was driving herself a little crazy wondering what exactly Chuck was thinking. Her ulcer was on the way to developing an ulcer.

“Hear that?” Chuck’s voice broke the silence that had fallen for what seemed like days.

Sarah strained her ears, but it seemed that the cold she had feared in the bar in Athens might be making its way to reality. Great. One more thing to make her life miserable. “What?”

“Something’s happening.”

They were living in open-walled cells in a detention center with convicts that came and went at all times of the day and night. “Something’s always happening.”

“I think it’s time to face the firing squad.”

“I highly doubt there’s going to be a firing squad.”

She heard an amused noise, not quite a laugh. “Do you think they’ll let me smoke a cigar instead of a cigarette? I mean, don’t get me wrong, James Dean could make a cigarette look cool, but I don’t know if I’d be able to pull that off. Especially since it would be a sin to shoot me wearing a leather jacket.”

He’d look good in a leather jacket, a little distressed and comfortable to wear off the nerd edges. And it was a sign of her own sense of humor that Sarah had to smile at such morbidity. “Again, I highly doubt there’s going to be a firing squad.”

A single shooter didn’t count as a squad.

“Probably for the best,” Chuck said. “I’d hate to crap my pants in front of a group of men like that.”

Sarah closed her eyes, and saw, once again, how defiantly Chuck had stood in front of Casey and his men on the beach in Athens, how much taller and broader and more heroic he’d seemed. She still didn’t precisely know where that cell phone and the media codes could have come from, but if forced, she would bet her old friend Randy might be involved. And she wasn’t sure how she felt about it all, even after given days of reflection on the matter. A little hurt, perhaps, that Chuck hadn’t seen fit to include her, but awed all the same at just how ingenious Chuck had been, and how fearless he had seemed on the beach.

She regulated her voice now. “Oh, I don’t know. I imagine given time you could talk them out of it.”

There wasn’t a reply. Sarah lifted her head and swiveled to look back at the wall between them, the wall she knew Chuck was leaning against on the other side, but she had not yet developed the ability to see through walls, so she had no idea what he was thinking. It made her want to hit something to be this close and this far away.

She didn’t get a chance. The footsteps arrived outside of Chuck’s cell, by the sound of it. Cautious, Sarah pushed off of her cot and wandered to the far corner of her cell, where she could see Chuck’s visitors. She recognized the heft and brawn of Major Casey right away.

“You Charles Bartowski?” Gwen Davenport of the FBI asked into Chuck’s cell. Her hair was considerably longer than it had been at the Christmas party a few years before, and there were a few more wrinkles, but Sarah definitely recognized her.

“Depends if it’s Ed McMahon at the door or not.”

Sarah hid a smile.

“I’m Gwen Davenport with the FBI.”

“FBI, CIA, NSA. You know what? I’m really tired of initials.”

As much as she would have loved to tell Chuck not to back-talk the woman who would be representing his case, Sarah couldn’t help but be proud. To see some fight in him again after Smith’s beat-down in Italy was amazing.

“Well, here’s a few for you. MYA,” John Casey said.

“Midgets Yacht Association?”

This time, she had to muffle a giggle.

“Move your ass, Bartowski. Get up.”

It took a minute, while Sarah waited, arms crossed over her chest, watching the two in the corridor that didn’t pay a lick of attention to her, focused as they were on whatever Chuck was doing in his cell. That was, Sarah corrected, until Casey glanced over and gave her a venomous look. Definitely no love lost there.

His shiner looked like it might be healing very slowly. Now the pride she felt was for herself.

“Inter-agency liaison?” Chuck asked, and Sarah tensed. He’d just flashed. Had Davenport caught it?

But Davenport wasn’t peering at Chuck oddly, which meant she hadn’t seen the way his face had no doubt gone slack and his pupils had expanded to the size of golf balls. “My reputation precedes me, apparently. How are you doing, Agent Bartowski?

“Healing, no thanks to Agent Casey’s buddy,” Chuck said.

“Major.”

“Major Bartowski? Has a nice ring to it.”

Casey looked like he would rather be cleaning out latrines. Sarah wanted to laugh.

In what was probably a good move to protect the nerd, Davenport stepped in. “Agent Bartowski, I’ve been assigned to your case and to protect you from any continuing abuse. If you’ll come with me?”

There was a pop and a hiss that marked the opening of cell doors in the detention center, though thanks to the angle, Sarah couldn’t see that. She decided to wander forward, just in case, so that she was up against the bars of her own cell. “Whoa,” Chuck said. “How did you—”

“You learn a few tricks over the years,” Davenport said. “Major Casey is here to keep an eye on you.”

That’s supposed to be my job, Sarah thought as Casey held up handcuffs and Chuck sighed. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he told the NSA agent.

“I should’ve shot you on the beach. Would’ve saved me loads of paperwork.”

“Oh, I’m not sure about that,” Sarah said, leaning her elbows through the bars of her cell. All three in the corridor turned to look at her, and she was grateful she’d at least finger-combed her hair. “Murder generates its own amount of paperwork. Any District Attorney could tell you that.”

“Would’ve been worth it. Say good-bye to your girlfriend, Bartowski. This is the last time you’ll be seeing the likes of this traitor.”

Casey flashed a huge, victorious smirk in her direction, and Sarah understood. Chuck would be granted some form of clemency, but her fate had been decided. That was, unless Casey was bluffing, but Sarah knew, deep down inside, he wasn’t. Her stomach turned inside out and threatened to upend itself all over the concrete, while her brain chided her for the purely emotional reaction. It wasn’t unexpected. She’d made her choice and would make the same one again in a heartbeat.

But did Casey really have to be such an asshole to Chuck about it?

Indeed, the human Intersect had gone the color of bone. “Wh-what?”

“They’re sending her to the pen. The big house, the slammer, the—”

“I get the picture!” Chuck snapped, and despite the nausea, Sarah wished Casey would come a little closer to the bars so she could punch him in his smug, fat face. But Chuck stepped between them, still pale. “They can’t send you away! You’re innocent—I know you are, I was right there with you—look, I’ll tell them it was my idea, that I coerced you or something...”

Sarah wanted to punch Casey all over again. But Casey wasn’t the important person here. So she took a deep breath, she looked at the man who trusted her most in the world, and she lied through her teeth, “Relax, Chuck. I’m not going to prison.”

“You’re—you’re not?”

Casey snorted. When Chuck shot an accusing look at him, Casey said, “News to me, twerp.”

“I got my orders a few hours ago.” It hurt to lie, but the truth hurt much, much worse. “While you were asleep. I was just hanging around until your representative got here. Trust Agent Davenport, Chuck. She’s one of the best—she’ll do right by you.”

Agent Davenport, who had been eyeing Sarah with the sort of interest Sarah didn’t feel comfortable with, as it meant she was being measured and weighed and possibly found wanting, chose this moment to step forward. “Thank you, Agent Walker,” she said, putting a hand on Chuck’s shoulder.

He shrugged it off. “O-orders?”

She could see it almost in slow motion, the same panic that had nearly overtaken him in the train station in Moscow returning. Chuck’s breathing grew shallower, his pupils dilating in a way that had nothing to do with an Intersect flash. Oh, no, Sarah thought. He was going to hyperventilate.

And she was going to be stuck on this side of the bars, able to provide absolutely no help. So she poked him. “Chuck! Relax.”

The breathing slowed, at least. Chuck still looked dead-pale. “Will I ever see you again?”

Probably never, Sarah thought, and wondered why that would cause physical pain in her chest. She shook her head and tried to infuse as much warmth into her voice as she could. “Who knows? I can’t make promises, you know that.”

Except she had. And now, she might have to break it, unless Gwen Davenport did her job.

She could see Chuck collecting himself, trying to be strong, maybe for her sake. “Hey, maybe they’ll have regular visiting hours at my bunker this time. It’s no Cabo or anything, but you could stop by.”

Davenport stepped forward again. “There will be no bunkers involved here, Agent Bartowski. Now, if we could move this along?”

“Yeah, the government’s not gonna wait all day for you lovebirds to keep twittering,” Casey said, and Sarah wanted to punch him again.

She tightened her grip on Chuck’s elbow, one last contact and one last moment of weakness. “Go on, Chuck.”

Then, and it seemed only then, he let himself be pulled down the corridor. He looked over his shoulder, his face heart-breaking and scared, as they led him away. “Good-bye, Sarah Walker.”

She waved back. “Good-bye, Chuck Bartowski.”

The tear slipped down her cheek before she could stop it and, horrified at herself, she ducked back into her cell so that she wouldn’t truly have to watch Chuck walking away from her.

**1 OCTOBER 2007  
AVIANO AIR BASE  
09:21 CET**

They hadn’t given her any coffee.

It was smart. In fact, they’d removed most of what could be considered a weapon from her person, which meant that her reputation had evidently preceded her. The lifeless brown shoes, prison shoes, had Velcro, the flight suit’s pockets had been cut out inside so that she couldn’t hide anything. The flight suit fit her horribly, a shapeless, baggy sack, but it at least had the benefit of being comfortable. They hadn’t even given her a hair-tie, so her hair lay loose over her shoulders. She’d held it back by tucking it into the collar of the flight suit.

Sitting there, hands cuffed behind her, without her knives and her S&W, she felt exposed and oddly cold, though it was plenty warm inside the interrogation chamber. Warm, she thought, and gray. Very, very gray. The walls were gray, the linoleum had grayed over time, and even the tabletop of the single piece of furniture—save the gray metal folding chair she was currently leaning back on two legs, her feet resting against the edge of the table so that she could hide her hands and the spring they held from the silvery-gray expanse of the observation window—seemed colorless with disinterest. With a single dim fluorescent light flickering overhead in the wooden rafters, the gray threatened to overwhelm everything, including her.

Perhaps it was fitting. She was in every sense of the word a prisoner, and the gray only amplified that. By now, Major Casey or one of his goons would have contacted Graham. She wondered what his reaction had been. One member of his top team gone rogue, the other member taken prisoner by agents of her own government, surely that reflected poorly on him. That was probably why he was letting the NSA deal with her; he was likely too disgusted to do otherwise at this point.

The door off to the side of the room, gray like everything else, opened, and her least favorite person entered, followed by one of his lackeys. Unlike her, he was holding coffee. It smelled sinful.

One more reason, Sarah thought, to hate John Casey. The man might be doing his job, but did he have to  _smirk_ all the damn time?

“Walker,” he said, as his lackey—whose nametag said Martinez—shut the door behind him with a click. Automatic lock, Sarah noted. There was no way she was getting out through there.

“Didn’t bring any for me?” she asked, eyeing Casey’s coffee.

He snorted. So far, Sarah had categorized about fourteen different noises, sarcasm level varying, that he used to communicate, and even fewer words. This snort was different than the one he’d given Chuck when Chuck had asked about staying at the Hilton instead of on base, but it boiled down to the same meaning: no way in hell.

She normally liked a man who stuck to his guns. She would have liked coffee more.

“I don’t have a lot of time to waste with pleasantries,” Casey said as Martinez took his place across the table, standing between Sarah and the door. “And nobody thinks they’re really all that pleasant anyway, so let’s get down to it: where’s Bryce Larkin?”

“Beats me,” Sarah said.

“Obviously you don’t understand how much trouble you’re in.”

Sarah laughed. It wasn’t the wisest move, but she was cranky. “I know exactly how much trouble I appear to be in, Major Casey. And if I knew where Bryce Larkin was, believe me, I would tell you. I owe him an ass-kicking for making my life hell.”

Casey took a long sip of coffee. Sarah knew exactly what he was doing: trying to play off of her weaknesses, which right now was a lack of sleep and a lack of information. Coffee would help with one, silence with the other. It would have been effective, if Sarah weren’t a trained interrogator herself, and if her thoughts weren’t down the hall. She’d spent most of the night worrying about Chuck, as they had him stored in a different building, but her fears had been for naught. She had seen him that morning when they had both been led into the MP office for their interrogations. He had looked nervous, but whole. She was more than starting to suspect he could take care of himself, given the way he’d stood up to her at the Acropolis, and the fact that he had set up a failsafe plan to protect them both, but it had laid to rest hours of worry to see that he was truly okay.

She forced her mind to focus on Casey. He was doing his hardest to break her, after all. She should at least pay him the respect of letting him think he might be making progress.

See? Sarah thought at the absent Carina. This is how you play nice with people.

“Okay, let’s put this a different way. Bryce Larkin blows up the Intersect, two hours later you’re on a plane out of the country toward the man he sent that same Intersect to, and you’re telling me that not only were you not involved, but you have no idea where Larkin is at all?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“How’d you know about the Intersect blowing up, then?”

“Great hearing.” Sarah cocked her head.

“Drop the cute act. That may work on the morons in the CIA, but I know better than that.”

“I don’t care if you believe me or not, Casey, but I was doing my job.”

“Letting oil sheiks get a peek up your skirt so that you can kill them with a pencil?”

“What can I say,” Sarah dead-panned. “My legs are killer. But no. My job was to protect Chuck. I was doing that the way I felt best, until you and your goons burst onto the scene and threatened to kill us both. Did you include that bit in your reports, Casey? I wonder what the higher-ups would think of you telling the Intersect that the next bullet goes in his brain. Seems counter-productive with all of the work they’ve put in on the Intersect project.”

“Probably the same thing they think about you taking a valuable piece of classified and dangerous intelligence on a joy-ride through Russia and Europe. What’s the matter, Walker? Get tired of humping CIA-sanctioned marks? Decide to get a little nerd-loving in?”

Sarah had to giggle. It was either that or see white again, and that option meant that Casey was getting to her. Careful not to move her wrists and give herself away, she let out a peal of laughter and tilted her chair back even farther. “Is that really what you think? That I was on some sort of...sex-capade? Pretty nice of Bryce to set that up for me, don’t you think?”

“Hey, I don’t ask what you CIA perverts get up to and you don’t tell.”

“If you know even a tenth of what I do about the Intersect project, you’ll know that Chuck is now extremely valuable. But he’s also a person, and I wasn’t sure who I could trust and who I needed to protect him from.” Sarah let the front two legs of her chair click back down onto the linoleum, though she didn’t remove her feet from the edge of the table. Martinez, still across the table from her, shifted his stance, and Casey began what she could only think was a prowl around the room, circling like a predator. “We were due to be extracted into the States today, actually, so that I could approach Langley and let them know that Chuck, and the intel, was safe, but your little stunt at my beach house put a stop to that.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I’m sorry. Your loss.”

“What I  _do_ believe,” Casey said, pacing behind her, “is that you and Larkin were working together. He blew up the Intersect computer, you retrieved the human subject to prep to sell to the highest bidder.”

“Why wasn’t I there sooner, then? Seems like if I’d been in on the plan from the beginning, I’d have snatched Chuck from the bunker a lot sooner.”

“Don’t ask me to explain the incompetence of the CIA. Larkin does his thing, you do your thing, and you meet up later, sell the Intersect, split the money, and spend the rest of your days doing perverted CIA things on some island nobody’s ever heard of.”

Wrong CIA agent for that fantasy, Sarah thought. She carefully clenched one fist and then the other, making sure that Casey couldn’t notice her movements. No more slipping like the Acropolis, or on the beach. She had to stay completely focused for Chuck’s sake, and maybe for her own. Chuck’s stunt with the media and the Intersect file had brought them both time, but her words now mattered, Sarah knew.

“First,” she said, her voice still saccharine, “his name is  _Chuck_ , not the Intersect, not the human subject, and he’s been a member of my team for going on two years now. He’s saved my life several times, so the last thing I would do is sell him on any market. I meant what I said: I wasn’t working with Bryce, and I was protecting Chuck. I don’t have the first clue where Bryce is, but after the hell he’s put Chuck and me through over the past several days, I will gladly hold him down while you get your kicks in, provided you return the favor.”

“Heh,” Casey said, and she nearly blinked to realize that Casey was thinking of just that scenario, and fondly. Apparently, she had an ally—if she could convince him of such. She heard him pause behind her. “This time, without the sarcasm: how did you know about the Intersect blowing up if you weren’t working with Larkin?”

“I told you—” Sarah broke off as a faint cry of pain split the air. Her head whipped toward the observation mirror. Chuck had been led away in that same direction. Surely that hadn’t been...in that second of silence, another cry broke through. A shout forced from somebody, somebody in deep pain. Sarah had heard the instinctive calls of too many people being tortured or hurt to know otherwise, and she recognized that voice.

Blood turned to ice water in her veins.

She gave no warning. The instant Chuck’s shout of pain ripped the air, Sarah Walker moved faster than she ever had before.

She drove her feet forward, shoving the table into Martinez’s stomach. Even as he doubled forward, grunting, Sarah let the chair fall back. She didn’t feel that one second of tell-tale weightlessness. By the time the chair hit the ground, she had flipped out of it, landing easily thanks to years of acrobatics and gymnastics and keeping up with her damned partner, who didn’t believe in things like gravity. Her hands snapped free of the cuffs, as she’d used a spring stolen from her mattress to pick that lock nearly an hour before. She pulled strength from her knees and core, and slammed her elbow as hard as she could into the smug visage of John Casey before he could even get an “Oh, shit” out. Her other hand grabbed his coffee, and she flicked her wrist, throwing that right into the face of the doomed Martinez.

She didn’t hear either man hit the floor. One jump and she was atop the table, sprinting full force down its length at the two-way observation glass. Her mind calculated distances, time; she reacted without thought, springing up so that her hands wrapped around the support rafter above her head, while momentum carried her forward feet-first, swinging straight for the glass.

She hit with a crash.

She landed with a crunch.

She felt neither.

There were two guards working the room, one at a recording station, the other by the door. The latter was already reaching for his gun when Sarah landed. She didn’t dodge; the guard at the recording station was on a rolling chair. She yanked him out and used him as a shield.

The tranq gun went off once, twice. By the third round, Sarah had rolled to her right, ignoring the bite of the shattered glass. She launched herself from a crouch to full flight, leading with her right foot. The kick caught the guard in the midsection; he toppled like a building. The gun clattered to the ground.

Six of Casey’s men had accompanied them to the interrogation rooms. Three down. Two to go. They’d be outside, in the hallway, waiting for her to emerge. Sarah shoved open the door, waited a split second that lasted an eternity in which she didn’t breathe, didn’t think, and her heart didn’t dare beat.

Then she threw herself forward and slid for home.

The guard in the hallway had obviously been expecting somebody at his level. By the time he readjusted his aim, she’d already shifted her weight onto her hands and one knee. She used her momentum to sweep his feet out from under him, drove an elbow into his stomach, and yanked the gun from his hand. One brief jerk of her arm and the guard would be enjoying several hours of naptime.

Where the hell was her last guard?

Chuck cried out again, and the noise was full of terror and pain.

Oh, God.

She didn’t let herself think, didn’t let herself imagine the thousands of horrible, bloody, painful scenarios that her mind was more than capable of picturing thanks to years of working for the CIA and visiting every war zone imaginable.

Not Chuck.

Not  _Chuck_ , damn it. She was supposed to keep him  _safe_.

Fear, rage, self-loathing, terror propelled her. She hit the door to Chuck’s interrogation room with both feet, and the ancient wood was no match. Splinters flew everywhere, but Sarah didn’t see them. She stepped in, chopped the side of her hand down and took out the first guard. The tableau unfolded: Chuck was in the corner, as if he’d been thrown there, crumpled forward in obvious pain. Standing over him was Lieutenant Smith, Casey’s second in command. He blinked stupidly at her, fist still raised.

Sarah didn’t think. She aimed and put two in his chest.

When nothing happened but two little red fletches spouting dead center over Smith’s heart, she threw the gun to the side and swore. Why the hell couldn’t they have carried real guns?

“Who the hell let you—” was all Smith got out before he dropped forward, out cold.

Sarah wasn’t sure her feet touched the ground at all as she raced across the room. “Chuck! Chuck, are you okay? Oh, God, are you okay? Are you hurt? What did he do to you?”

The lump on the ground coughed once, twice, and the sound of it froze the ice water pumping through her system. “S-Sarah?” Chuck lifted his head, and Sarah’s heart leapt backward and up into her throat. His face was already swelling, blood dribbling from a split lip, a red mark swallowing his left eye. “How did you get in here?”

Rage was a living thing, biting into her so intensely that she shook. Even worse than that was the panic, which paled in the face of the encompassing, whole-body fear that had overtaken her the instant she had heard Chuck shout. She wanted to kick Smith’s face and head until there was nothing but a bloody pulp left, but the very real confusion and worry in Chuck’s eyes, the fact that he was obviously so badly injured, would have to come first. She ran her hands over him, checking for breaks, making sure he was whole.

He grabbed her hands. “I’m okay, I’m fine.”

“You’re not.” And now, on top of everything else, there was the burn of very real tears in the back of her throat. “You’re not. He hurt you.”

“Not very much.” But Chuck proved himself wrong by coughing, and blood spattered the ground and the front of Sarah’s flight-suit. It wasn’t much, but to Sarah, it might as well have been an ocean.

She actually felt the world tilt and judder. So much blood, was all she could think. They had hurt her Chuck, and there was so much blood.

She turned mechanically. What she had in mind to do, she didn’t know, but the last time she had felt this lack of emotion, lack of anything had been...never. She’d killed genocidal dictators with more pity. Her eyes fell on the downed Smith.

Unlike the other guards, he didn’t carry a tranq pistol. She could see it there, not even snapped down, in a hip holster. She reached for it; her only thought was that she hoped the scumbag had a full magazine. She was going to  _enjoy_ unloading a few rounds into his head.

A hand grabbed hers. Her first instinct was Farm-trained: grab the thumb, exert just the right amount of torque, give the owner of the hand something to think about for the next ten days to six weeks. Her second instinct turned all of her internal organs to jelly, especially when that hand shifted, the fingers interlocking with her own. Chuck. What the hell had she been about to do? She pushed out a shaky breath and turned back as slowly as she’d turned away. Chuck was giving her his most earnest look.

“I’m  _fine_ ,” he said again. “Just cut up my lip a little.”

“Yeah, running into his fist.” She forced herself to focus past the second surge of fury. “What happened?”

“He wanted the media code. Apparently, the word ‘please’ is not in his vocabulary.” Chuck looked like he was trying to twist his face up into a smile, possibly for her benefit, but the best he could do was a pained grimace. It really was possible, Sarah realized distantly, to taste raw anger. Chuck still had a hold of her hand, however, preventing her from turning and delivering a few punches her instructors at the Farm had specifically warned against using, as they usually involved lethal force. “How did you get in here? Where did you come from? Did you kick in the door or am I hallucinating?”

“It was old. Didn’t take much. And Casey and his toady were...otherwise occupied, so I came to see you.” Sarah heard the footsteps clanging from the hallway and extricated her hand from Chuck’s. “And on that note.”

She turned, grabbed Smith’s gun, and had just pointed it at the empty doorway when Casey came barreling through. He pulled up short at the sight of the carnage: two dropped guards, one broken door, the bleeding Chuck, and Sarah standing in the center of the room, gun aimed at him. He aimed his right back at her. “What the  _hell_  was that, Walker?”

“Don’t move,” Sarah said. “Don’t come one step closer. You and your men have done enough.”

She was shaking, she realized, almost quivering. She could only hope that Casey didn’t notice.

“That’s not how this works,” Casey said. “Drop the gun.”

“No.”

“Fine. After that little stunt you pulled, I should shoot you and save the legal system the trouble and money of convicting you of treason and attempted murder.”

“That’s if I don’t shoot you first.”

From behind Sarah, there was another cough, and then Chuck spoke up. “I’m sorry, but is the whole ‘at gunpoint’ thing necessary to this conversation?”

“Of course not. I’ll put down my gun when Walker does.”

“I’m not putting my gun down.” Sarah shifted her grip. It was a minute movement, but any experienced gunman knew that actually sliding the index finger onto the trigger was a warning.

“Look around you, Walker. You’re in the middle of an Air Force Base. With your looks, you won’t get twenty feet outside this room without being swarmed by horndog airmen on leave. I won’t even have to call the guards.”

“I’m not going to escape,” Sarah said, biting off her words. “What I’m doing is I’m keeping all of you the hell away from Chuck.”

“Bartowski’s fine.”

“No, he’s not. So I am staying right here and I am holding onto this gun until you get Chuck some medical attention. And if you don’t like it, you can suck it.”

Casey’s sneer seemed automatic, and well-used. “So that’s how it’s going to be?”

“I’ll let you get your men out of here,” Sarah said. “But nobody but a doctor is going near Chuck.”

“Sarah, I’m fine, really, I promise.” Beside her, Chuck tried to lurch to his feet, his movements drunken and pained.

The reflex was automatic from both agents, apparently. “Stay down!” Sarah and Casey said at the same time.

Chuck sat down. “Okay, okay, sheesh.”

Casey broke first. “I let the doctor in, you put your gun down.”

“Not until the doctor is here.”

“You try to pull anything—”

“I won’t.”

“You try to pull anything, and I will end you, Walker. I mean that. I know a lot of people high up the chain that would love nothing more than to see your scrawny CIA ass freezing on Mount Washington.”

“Hey!” This came from Chuck, and made both agents look over at him. “She’s not scrawny. And she’s doing her job much better than you are, so back off.”

Casey must have caught the murderous glare Sarah was currently putting all of her effort into, for he didn’t have a snappy comeback to that one. Instead, she caught the way his eyes lingered on Chuck, checking the other man’s injured state. Apparently he wasn’t entirely incompetent. He said nothing about it, though. “Jones, Martinez, go get Smith before she kills him.” When neither man behind him made a move, he growled. “That was not a request! Move it!”

Though it bothered her to no end to see the man who had hurt Chuck be toted away from where she could do considerable bodily harm, she kept her word and allowed Martinez, who was blinking a lot and covering his scalded face, and Jones cart the other man away, keeping her gun trained on Casey. Once they’d cleared the room of both Smith and the other unlucky guard, she tilted her head slightly. “Now, the doctor.”

“He’s already on his way. Drop the gun.”

“Not until he’s here.”

“You two,” Chuck said from the floor, “are very strange.”

Neither contradicted him.

**2 OCTOBER 2007  
AVIANO AIR BASE**  
 **05:42 CET**

Once the doctor had declared Chuck’s injuries to be superficial, and that he would be fine to travel—though it was not recommended—Sarah had allowed herself to be put back into handcuffs. Casey had ordered her thrown into the same cell as Chuck’s (“They can fight over who gets the cot.”), and had left the two of them alone for the rest of the day. It had passed mostly in silence. The drugs they’d fed him had made Chuck incredibly sleepy and groggy. He’d tried to insist that Sarah take the cot. She’d agreed to, then, the moment he’d fallen asleep, had bodily hauled him onto the cot and left him there. She was content to sit at the foot of the bed and let her body recover. The spike of adrenaline and fear had turned her into a shaky mess, and it took hours for the trembling to stop.

It was a temporary victory, being near Chuck, and she knew it. When they got to D.C., Casey would do everything in his power to exact his revenge for the fact that she had neutralized his team in less than thirty seconds. Men like Casey, men who lived and breathed only when Uncle Sam told them to, didn’t tend to take that sort of thing lightly, and they had an even longer memory than she did.

But she was with Chuck, and for now, she could keep him safe.

Now she followed Chuck off of tarmac and onto the loading ramp of a C-130 plane. The sun hadn’t even risen yet, so the airfield was chilly, the air damp and sticking uncomfortably to places like the back of her neck and the insides of her wrists. Martinez had her on a lead rope, and he wasn’t being particularly gentle, but she didn’t care. They let her sit next to Chuck.

“Stay,” Martinez told her once he’d finished locking the handcuffs to the restraint bar attached to the floor. They were taking no chances. Why the men were calling her She-Ra, she had no idea. It hadn’t made Chuck glare when he’d heard it, so she didn’t figure it was an insult.

Chuck leaned toward her, grimacing. “Hey, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure, what?”

“Remember that thing you did at the Acropolis? Is there like a six-hour version of that you could do to me? I promise not to drool on your shirt.”

“Oh, yes, because I care so much about this,” Sarah said, giving the flightsuit she was still wearing a deadpan look. “Unfortunately, my hands are kind of full right now.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess so.” He looked awful, Sarah couldn’t help but think. Even in the dimmed lighting on the back of the plane, a whole half of his face was puffy, his eye swollen mostly shut. They were lucky Smith hadn’t knocked any teeth loose.

The thought of it made Sarah very slowly turn and glare at the man who had caused all of it. Smith glared right back.

“Where are we, anyway?”

“Italy,” Sarah said. “Near Venice.”

“Really?” Chuck perked up. “I’ve always wanted to go to Venice. Those little boats they’ve got, the, you know which ones they are—”

“Gondolas,” Sarah said.

“Yeah, those. Always wanted to ride one. Although I think you’re required to have a date on those. It’d be pretty lame to have some strange Italian man singing love songs to you while you sit there all by yourself.”

Sarah bit her tongue over an offer to go along with Chuck on said ride, as she wasn’t sure he would be able to take her up on it. If her gamble with Gwen Davenport worked, he might be free to eventually explore Venice—likely with an armed detail—but she probably wasn’t going to see the outside of a prison cell for a long time.

“I don’t think they actually sing anymore,” she said instead.

“I’m sure if you pay them enough, they would.” Chuck broke off with a groan.

Sarah glanced over sharply. “What? What is it?”

“Nothing. Just remind me not to breathe too deeply.”

“That’s it. I’m going to kill Smith,” Sarah muttered, and thankfully the plane’s engines started up, masking her words from Chuck. She scooted over to give Chuck more room, so he could be a little more comfortable.

“Hey, Sarah?” Chuck had to shout to be heard over the engine noise. He broke down into a coughing fit, and Sarah wanted to tell him not to talk, to save his strength, but she knew he wouldn’t listen.

“Yes?”

“What—what happens now?”

Sarah paused, debating if she really wanted to answer that. “You know what? Ask me when we’re about to land. I’ll know more.”

“Okay.” Chuck gave her the smile that could destroy her from the inside, a little sleepy, the smile that said he trusted her completely, that things would be all right because she was there. It terrified her and at the same time, it made her want to be the person that deserved that smile, though she doubted she ever would be. Then his smile faltered abruptly, and she had no idea why. Before she could ask, though, he leaned back against the seat and pretended to be asleep.

Well, that was odd.

Casey appeared, gripping the straps overhead to make his way to them. “No funny business,” he told Sarah on the way by, a ferocious scowl in place.

“Chuck stays safe, I won’t do a thing,” Sarah told him, and kept up the innocent look until the other man had strapped himself in between her and Smith. She didn’t blame him. She was still toying with the idea of breaking free of her restraints and poisoning Smith’s drink. It might be a womanly way to kill somebody, but she didn’t care. She’d seen firsthand what some poisons could do, and while it wasn’t  _quite_ awful enough for what she wished would happen to Smith, it would have to suffice.

When the plane hit open sky, she closed her eyes. Next stop, she thought, D.C. And the tap-dancing would truly begin.

**5 OCTOBER 2007  
SECURE HOLDING FACILITY, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA  
11:57 EDT**

It took longer than she expected, but that may have been her complete lack of objectivity. Time had a way of speeding or slowing right before a major event, Sarah had always found. Even so, time slowed so much that Sarah began to doubt she had correctly interpreted the look Gwen Davenport had given her before the FBI and the NSA had taken Chuck away from her. She had nothing else to do, though, so she waited, both hating every passing minute and grateful because it meant that the evidence of her tears vanished.

At long last, she heard the noise down the corridor of cells change and stir in a way that indicated visitors. Following that came the click of expensive high heels on concrete, and Sarah relaxed. Agent Davenport might have been on an FBI salary, but Sarah had noted the tasteful cut of her suit and the Louboutins. There was money there.

And class, too. Gwen Davenport didn’t speak immediately when she reached Sarah’s cell, like Sarah didn’t look over right away. It was just another game of nonverbal chess, Sarah knew.

“Crimson Radcliffe, huh?”

Sarah moved a shoulder, a half-shrug. “I was in a hurry.”

“Didn’t put it together that the bright, young, Harvard student that looked more like a model I met at a holiday party years ago was the one sending me a file until a couple of days ago. I thought you were Secret Service.”

Sarah shook her head. “CIA.”

“Pity.”

Far be it from her to defend her agency right now. “It pays the bills.”

“Mm-hmm. Well, either way, I’m glad I broke your code, or I never would have found either of you, the way the CIA had you buried.”

“I’m glad you did.” Sarah unfolded out of the half-Lotus and rose to her feet, crossing to the bars of her cell again. She leaned one shoulder against the wall and looked out at Gwen. “Where is Chuck?”

“I’m not authorized to tell you that.”

Sarah’s stomach fell. “I see.”

Though Gwen’s eyes had been kindly when she had led Chuck away, they hardened into blue steel now. “I have questions for you, Agent Walker.”

“I thought you might.”

“You met Chuck Bartowski nearly two years ago. You knew the conditions in which he was living, and you clearly knew my office existed. Why did you wait until last week to come to me?”

Guilt twisted through Sarah’s stomach. “I didn’t remember you.”

“What could possibly have jogged your memory while on the run?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I think you’re lying to me, Walker. I read your file. Recruited at seventeen, top of your class, lots of commendations for actions that are all black-lined.” Agent Davenport’s voice never fluctuated, edged with a simmering anger that, had Sarah been a fearful person, would have made Sarah grateful for the bars between them. It was no mystery how Gwen Davenport had become the head of her division. “I think what you are is a Company woman, through and through. Chuck Bartowski was an asset to the Company, and so you left him right where he could provide the most help, and only contacted me to help save your own ass.”

Though she made sure her face never changed, Sarah had to fight the desire to lash out, grab the back of Gwen Davenport’s head, and slam her face into the bars. The rest of her wanted to curl up and try to blink out of existence. Gwen was right. She could have remembered and gone to somebody like Gwen sooner. She had had everything in her power to save Chuck from the bunker, and she’d done nothing. She’d even told herself that he didn’t mind time and again to make it better, to make it easier.

She ignored the little voice in the back of her head that Chuck himself could have gone to Gwen and her division, and hadn’t because he felt like being in Siberia was his duty and his way to make a difference, and even though she knew Chuck had gone beyond the call of duty, she understood the drive to belong and do well because it had compelled her to do the same from the age of seventeen, to kill and steal and do despicable things in the name of Uncle Sam. Of course, he’d reached his breaking point with his time in the bunker, if his threat to kill himself before returning to the bunker had any truth in it, but she still understood the basic principle behind his initial service.

But it wasn’t an excuse, and she knew it.

“In the CIA, we’re trained not to rely upon anybody,” she said. Her study of Gwen had told her that an impassioned plea would hold more water, but that felt like cheating, and she had cheated Chuck enough. “That asking for help is the equivalent of failure. You never know if you’re going to have help in the field, so it’s best never to expect it. On top of that mentality, the CIA would have me completely forget that you and your division exist. They like their agents to follow the Company lines. So, you’re right, up until this past week, I was very much a Company woman.”

“What changed?”

“My partner betrayed the government, Chuck, and myself, and I saw the full extent of what government service had done to Chuck. So I contacted you and yes, I do regret not doing so two years ago.”

Gwen was silent for a long time, and even though she had a lifetime in the study of body language, Sarah couldn’t read the other woman’s face. “Why didn’t you contact me directly?”

“Because I was not sure who I could trust.”

“Yet you still had that file sent to me.”

“Straight to your desk, via a courier I was relatively sure I could trust. I paid him enough, that’s for sure. But I could not be sure you weren’t being monitored, so I didn’t follow up.”

“Paranoid.”

“Occupational hazard.”

“Very well. So why did you feel Chuck would be safer with you alone than the best protection detail the government had to offer?”

“Chuck trusts me, which, in his current state, is the best protection the government can afford. And two people can hide in plain sight far more easily than a detail.”

“What is your relationship with him, Agent Walker?”

“Friends and coworkers,” Sarah said without hesitation. “He trusts me. And thanks to Agent Larkin, it’s my job to protect him. I did what I felt was best. As for your accusation about me only wanting to save my own ass, you’re wrong. I contacted you for Chuck, not me.”

“Agent Bartowski is not the only one who needs representation in this matter.”

“He needs it more. I’ll be fine.”

One corner of Gwen’s mouth quirked upward, a half-smile and the first break in the dam. “Nobody likes a martyr, Agent Walker.”

And nobody likes a bitch on a high horse, Sarah almost replied. Instead, she moved forward, threading her arms through the bars so that she could lean forward on her elbows. “In a perfect world, we both know a representative would be the best thing for me, but this isn’t a perfect world. I’m sure your division is pretty damn effective at its job, but having that rep is only going to piss my bosses off more and make things worse for me. I’ve pissed them off enough lately, thanks. I’m better off on my own.”

“If that’s how you feel about it, why conspire to get me on Chuck’s case?”

“Because Graham doesn’t like you, and the bosses aren’t the only ones pissed off.”

“Just friends and coworkers, huh?”

“You don’t get to make a lot of friends in the CIA,” Sarah said, “so the ones you do make are important.”

“Mm-hmm. Still seems a long way to go for just a friend.”

“That’s a bit surprising coming from the woman who not five minutes ago accused me of not doing enough for my friend.”

“Touché. I’ll speak to my supervisors about your case.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“You don’t have the market cornered on being pissed off, Agent Walker. I had Chuck Bartowski transferred to a hotel, and Major Casey is with him. And yes, only Major Casey. I had very little choice about that,” Gwen Davenport said, and with a nod of her head, left. Alone, Sarah leaned her weight against the wall and slid until she was sitting on the floor, staring at nothing. If she had only remembered Gwen Davenport sooner, everything would be much, much different. Chuck would be healthier, she wouldn’t be sitting behind bars, and Bryce would...well, who the hell knew what Bryce would be doing? Sarah had stopped knowing the minute she’d gotten that phone call from Digital Dave.

But Chuck was safe, and in a hotel, so that was something. It would have to do.

**8 OCTOBER 2007  
SECURE HOLDING FACILITY, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA  
21:18 EDT**

Around the Farm, there were stories. Every training scenario came with at least three or four ghost stories of agents who had either failed a course so spectacularly that they had been dropped from the program and black-listed or who had done so well they had immediately been offered agent status. There were tales of death from food eaten in the cafeteria, long sagas of the most legendary agents, whose training names were still listed on the plaques hanging up around the cafeteria, whispered accounts of those wonder teams that always got the prime jobs filled with danger, sex, and glamour. And among those stories was the story of the 34-J, the court-martial so secret it didn’t exist in the CIA code of conduct manuals. Students would always point out that there was a 34-I and a 34-K, but the 34-J was conspicuously absent.

And if Sarah had known then that it wasn’t just a mythical horror, she would have paid more attention to those rumors.

They didn’t let her sit. No, instead, she stood, wearing a dark orange pair of trousers, shapeless and baggy like the flight suit had been, and an overlarge orange tunic. She was cuffed at the ankle and at the wrist, and both sets of cuffs were locked to the floor. They didn’t even let her appear presentable for her under-the-table court martial.

She didn’t know the name of a single person in the room besides her own, and that of Director Graham, who sat with the others at the tables. There were seven of them in all, at seven identical tables on a raised platform, while she remained standing in the center of the room, under an uncomfortably-warm spotlight. The walls were dark, and there were no windows—unsurprising, given that they were underground, a couple of levels above the detention center.

Each table contained a sizeable stack of files. She’d wondered what they could contain at first, but it quickly became obvious: anything and everything she had done for the CIA, not a single line redacted. The past two days had been devoted to going over every single line in those files. Sarah had essentially heard her entire life history—every grade at Harvard, every score from Camp Peary and Harvey Point, the result of every failed and successful op she had run. It was a little more than disquieting. It was like she had been stripped naked and studied by a group of men whose names she didn’t have the authority to learn, save that the CIA found them important. They even knew her real name.

The man at the center desk, more ancient than the rest of the gentlemen in the room put together, and whom Sarah had taken to calling Eyebrows, as that was his most identifiable feature aside from a lantern jaw and a dour look, cleared his throat and closed the final file. “Do the gentlemen of this council have anything to add?”

A general murmur that nobody did.

“Have we reached a decision?”

Another murmur, this time affirmative.

“Very well. Having heard the sworn testimony of the agent so-called Sarah Walker in the matter of the Central Intelligence Agency 34-J Court Hearing, the Council has reached its decision.”

Sarah’s stomach hit her knees.

“Agent Sarah Walker, so-called, the council finds you guilty of high treason in collusion to the destruction and theft of the Intersect project. As punishment for your innumerable crimes against the Government of the United States of America, you should be sentenced to twenty-five years in federal prison.”

Raw pain and terror speared through Sarah’s gut. She dropped her gaze. Even her famous and infallible poker face couldn’t stand up to that sort of sucker punch. Twenty-five years. Twenty-five years was a  _long_ time. Almost as long as she had been on this earth. By the time she got out of there, she would be in her fifties.

Oh, God.

“However,” Eyebrows continued, and Sarah’s head snapped up, “there is the matter of a certain piece of blackmail making its way through the channels.” Eyebrows gestured one frail hand toward the screen to the side of the chamber, the same screen on which Sarah had spent two days watching surveillance of many of her kills and ops, including that first, horrible assassination. It flickered to life now.

A face filled the screen, and Sarah’s traitorous heart leaped. Chuck! The video wasn’t very high-quality—it looked like it had been shot at very low resolution, like a cell phone camera—but Chuck’s face was perfectly clear. He looked so sober that it took Sarah a second to recognize the bathroom from the second safe house in Athens behind him.

“My name,” Chuck said into the camera phone, his face distorted into pixels and blurs, “is Charles Bartowski. I am an analyst for the CIA, currently on the run. And if you’re watching this, it means that I have sent a locked file containing information on national secrets, information I don’t think any of you want getting out, to five media sources. It’ll be like a field day for them, trust me. And if I have not sent a personal code to destroy the file, it will unlock automatically two weeks to the second after being sent. If you are watching this in that time, my requests are simple: clean slates for both Agent Sarah Walker and myself. Neither of us was working with Bryce Larkin, so you can do whatever you like to him, but Sarah and I are innocent, and if you want that code sent, you’ll believe it.”

The video ended on Chuck’s face looking entirely sober and unlike him. Sarah didn’t dare breathe. She knew Chuck had told the others he’d sent that file on the beach, but she had thought of it as a bluff, a way to buy them time. Casey hadn’t even asked her about it in the interrogation. She had assumed, with the all-too-real evidence of the 34-J in front of her, that the bosses and everybody else had dismissed it out of hand. Apparently, she had assumed incorrectly, as there was an air of definite unease among the seven sitting at the desks. Well, Sarah thought, looking at her old mentor, six of the seven were uneasy. Graham was leaning back, quite at his leisure, idly rolling a pencil between his thumb and forefinger while he studied the other men in the room.

Finally, the reedy-voiced man at the end cleared his throat. “I move that the accused be removed from the premises in order to allow for a more open discussion.”

“Seconded.”

“Motion passed. Agent, remove the accused.”

In a lengthy process that was repeated at meal-times, recesses, and at the end of the day, Sarah was unchained from the bar on the floor and led away by the nameless agent. His name hadn’t been used either, but he had stood guard quietly, always three feet behind her and a foot to the left, hands held in parade rest behind him. If he ever grew weary of the stance, he didn’t let it show.

Agent No-Name didn’t lead her far. They reached the two benches outside of the courtroom, one on either side of the hall, and he locked her into place in front of one. At least, Sarah thought, letting her weary body sink down, she could sit.

“You don’t have to stand,” she told Agent No-Name. “I promise you, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Do not speak unless spoken to,” Agent No-Name said, looking and sounding like he might be John Casey’s long lost CIA brother.

Since replying would only start the cycle over again, Sarah closed her eyes.  _You should be sentenced to twenty-five years in federal prison_. They hadn’t even brought in any real evidence to convict her, she thought, the unfairness of it all boiling in her stomach. They had simply looked over her actions in the past week and a half, and made a decision. Every blemish, every spot on her record, had been weighed against her, every mission reviewed with commentary about how it could have been run better.

As if the bastards inside that room even knew what it was like to be a field agent anymore. She was pretty sure that Eyebrows wasn’t even CIA, that he was OSS, and had probably slipped behind enemy lines in France or Germany. Any other day she might have been impressed, but to have that same man comment on how slowly she had cracked a top-of-the-line bank vault with tools he hadn’t even heard of...

She wanted to kick something.

Footsteps made her look up. They were several levels under the main floor at Langley, so anybody walking these halls was definitely meant to be there, and she hadn’t seen a soul down here but Agent No Name and the seven men in the room with her. This time, it sounded like the click of high heels on the concrete floor.

A tiny woman in uniform rounded the corner. Sarah didn’t have to see the number of stars on the woman’s shoulders to know that she should rise to her feet. Everything about the woman screamed of disapproval and prim lines, from the top of a bun that was surely the result of Miss Clairol to the toes of the no-nonsense military pumps.

“Hm,” she said, stopping in front of Sarah and looking her up and down. “For some reason, I expected you to be taller.”

That was not something Sarah, whose height had hit awkward unfortunately around the same time as the rest of her poor teenage self, had ever expected to hear. She blinked.

The woman hardly noticed. “Where is Director Graham?”

“Still inside the courtroom, ma’am,” Agent No Name said before Sarah could.

The General, whose nametag read Beckman, turned and silenced the brawny agent with a single look. “I don’t believe I was addressing you, Agent Danowitz.”

“My apologies, ma’am, but the accused is not supposed to—”

“Agent Danowitz, do you like your job?”

Agent No Name abruptly looked uncertain. “Of course, ma’am.”

“Then I suggest you stop talking until I tell you otherwise.”

The agent wisely remained silent. General Beckman turned back to Sarah, giving her another critical once-over. “I’m only going to ask you this once, Agent Walker,” she said, and Sarah had to admire the woman for having that much bravado when she barely rose to Sarah’s chin. “Did you aid Agent Larkin in any way in his destruction of the DNI room and the theft of the contents within?”

“I did not, ma’am.”

Beckman’s entire countenance went from steely to waspish at Sarah’s words. “I don’t suppose you’d have any proof of that to make things easier, would you?”

“Believe me, after the last couple of days, if I’d had any proof, I would have offered it by now.”

Beckman’s scowl deepened. “Danowitz,” she said without looking over her shoulder at the chastised Agent Formerly Known as No Name, “take a walk.”

To his credit, he only hesitated for a few seconds before he hurried away.

Once he was gone, Beckman gestured irritably at Sarah to sit down. “We’ve stood on enough ceremony for the damned CIA today,” she said, taking a seat as Sarah went through the process of lowering herself down without falling over. “As you’ve no doubt guessed by now, I am General Diane Beckman, and the NSA half of the Intersect Project was my responsibility. A responsibility that is now a headache thanks to the grandstanding stunt your former partner pulled.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Sarah said.

“And it should have stayed that way, but it didn’t, and now here we are.” Beckman gave the dark hallway around them a distasteful look. “Pandering to the CIA and its absurd need for secrecy yet again. I knew I should have passed on this project when it was offered, but that’s neither here nor there. You became acquainted with Chuck Bartowski two years ago, correct?”

“Yes. He’s been remote tech support for Agent Larkin and myself ever since. We’ve been his main contacts.”

Beckman nodded, but didn’t explain. “And your relationship with Agent Bartowski?”

Was she going to have to jump through this hoop with everybody from the President to the mailman? Sarah only just managed to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “Friends and coworkers.”

“Oh, really, now.” It wasn’t a question, so Sarah didn’t answer it. “I think you need to take a look at this.”

Sarah had some difficult taking the manila folder from the General with the handcuffs on, but she managed and, holding it awkwardly between her thumb and her ring-finger, was able to peruse the contents. It didn’t take her long to figure out what the folder held. Confused, she looked over at the General.

“Those were taken by some of the top NSA psychologists. They are unaware that Mr. Bartowski—”

“Agent Bartowski,” Sarah said without thinking.

Beckman let out a little huff of breath through her nose and gave Sarah a deadpan stare, and Sarah decided that maybe she shouldn’t interrupt again. “As I was saying, they are unaware that  _Agent_ Bartowski is the Intersect, but there are some rather interesting trends present, wouldn’t you say?”

At any other point in time, a trend showing a fixation or deference to her—as the file had called it—on Chuck’s psych profile would have sent a flutter through Sarah’s stomach. She probably would have turned into a sappy, idiotic female, even. But she was too busy fighting bewilderment. Why on earth was she being given permission to view Chuck’s psych profile? Hadn’t they just been determined to throw her in prison?

Since Beckman was expecting an answer, Sarah cleared her throat. “I fail to see why it would be particularly interesting. The man has been living in a bunker for three years with very little contact. I was part of that ‘very little contact.’ It seems natural that he would have some sort of...” What the hell was the word she was looking for? “Dependency.”

“He doesn’t seem to regard Agent Larkin in the same light, even though they were college roommates and said to be very close.”

“With all due respect, ma’am, Agent Larkin sent him the Intersect and started the spiral that led to Chuck being taken captive by the US government. I’m the one that coerced him to leave the bunker, and I spent pretty much every following moment with him until we were separated a few days ago. He’s bound to place me above Bryce in his esteem right now.”

“So you say,” Beckman said. Both women looked over as the door to the courtroom opened. Sarah’s heart rate sped up, but she calmly closed the file and tried not to look guilty as Director Graham came out. None of the other council members followed him. Beckman didn’t rise. “Director.”

“General.”

Sarah looked from one to the other and sensed, not for the first time since Beckman had arrived, that something way above her pay grade was going on here. She focused on Graham. The man had been her recruiter for the CIA, and her mentor throughout the years. Sure, she’d harbored more than a few thoughts of outright hatred toward him over the past week and a half, but all of that history had to count for something. “Have they reached a decision?”

“They reached their decision long before they ever got inside that courtroom, Agent Walker.”

“I see,” Sarah said, and had to look down very quickly as her poker face cracked yet again. “Do I at least get to pick the prison?”

“We’re not sending you to Gitmo, Walker. The fact is, you’re compromised, and the CIA doesn’t like compromised agents. Even if they’d found you innocent, you’ve gone off-grid and that looks bad for the Agency.” Graham’s face settled into the same annoyed lines Sarah had seen in the courtroom for the past two days. “Keeping you on staff provides a bad example.”

“I see.”

“But thanks to your friend, firing you means all our dirty laundry will be aired to the media, and the NSA will not tolerate that.”

“Can’t imagine why not,” Beckman said, her voice so droll that Sarah almost wanted to take lessons.

Graham shot his contemporary a look. “Similarly, the Intersect Project is now a mess. The plans had been going forward to use a healthy host for the Intersect secrets inside of six months. Instead, the original files are destroyed and the Intersect is currently residing in the head of a man who is essentially a shut-in. So that makes two major issues.” He steepled his fingers together in front of his broad chest. “And fortunately, we can clean them both up with one easy solution.”

Though the line about Chuck being a shut-in rankled, she merely stared at Graham.

“That solution would be you, Agent Walker. As of 0800 tomorrow, you’re assigned to Operation Prometheus.”

“Operation Prometheus?”

“The NSA scientists who have been studying Agent Bartowski’s cognitive abilities believe that he can serve as the human Intersect we’ve been hoping for. With a little coercion, of course. Given that his psych profile shows deference to your judgment, it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

The full impact hit Sarah. If she hadn’t been hand-cuffed and essentially hobbled, she would have sprung to her feet to tell them exactly how to go to hell. She chose the next best option, and went very still. Rage made her want to shake, but she focused all of her anger into a single icy look. “Don’t you think you’ve done  _enough_ to him?”

“Agent Bartowski volunteered for Prometheus, Walker,” Beckman said, a warning in her voice. “We’ve even arranged the headquarters based on his own requests. He is participating because he wishes to.”

“Oh? And how am I supposed to believe that when you just told me that my job would be to coerce Chuck to be the perfect little robot for both of you?”

“Mind your tone, Agent Walker,” Beckman said. “You may be entitled to an opinion, but I don’t pay you enough to have to listen to it.”

“You don’t pay me at all. I don’t work for you.”

“Incorrect. The minute you got involved in matters of the Intersect, you became joint property of the NSA and CIA. You can join Prometheus willingly, keep your CIA title, and the 34-J will be expunged from your record.” Beckman’s eyes flashed. “Or you can rot in prison.”

Sarah glared right back. “I will not manipulate Chuck for you or anybody else, General. The government has done enough to him, and I won’t be part of that.”

“Walker.” Graham’s quiet tone made her look at him, across the corridor from Beckman and herself. He was leaning forward, his face earnest. Before this whole mess had exploded, she would have trusted that face. Now she mostly wanted to kick it. “The General and myself would like nothing more than for the Intersect to be in anybody but your partner. But the fact of the matter is, he has it, and we have spent far too much money on this project not to go forward with it. If we don’t invoke Prometheus, the only other choice is to send Agent Bartowski into protective custody. Giving him operational status means that he’ll be able to work in an environment close to his sister and the others he didn’t get to see in a bunker, and wouldn’t be able to see from protective custody. However, we can’t deny Bartowski has several emotional and psychological problems he will also have to cope with.”

“And whose fault is that?”

Graham ignored the dig. “The psych profile shows that Bartowski struggles less whenever you’re nearby. Call it what you will, but it’s there. We need him as field-ready as he can be, but we also need somebody on the team who understands how Larkin’s brain works, in order to safeguard the Intersect from any attack on that front. You fill both requirements.”

Sarah stared at her old mentor for a long time. She hardly knew what to think anymore, except that she was angry. Not as angry as she had been in Italy, but she still had a good head of fury boiling. How  _dare_ they? After everything else they had done to Chuck, to her, how dare any of them? How dare Gwen Davenport judge her? How dare Beckman take that tone with her? How dare Graham try to use emotional blackmail on her?

You could work with Chuck, a small voice said at the back of her head. See Chuck every day, outside of the bunker, without a price on both of your heads.

Coerce Chuck.

Manipulate Chuck.

But they don’t have to know, the voice argued. They’re not going to be there every day and heaven knows you’re good enough at lying. You could tell them what they want to hear. Isn’t being with Chuck enough to make up for a little deception on your part with the bosses? Isn’t keeping him safe worth it?

It had never been a choice. She knew it, Graham knew it, Beckman knew it. Even so, Sarah kept her gaze focused on the ground between Graham’s feet, not willing to concede the victory to them yet. “What does Operation Prometheus entail?”

**9 OCTOBER 2007  
ECHO PARK, CALIFORNIA  
14:02 PDT**

“I really appreciate you being willing to do this on such short notice. I’m just...” Sarah searched for a proper excuse. NCS hadn’t had time to put together much of a cover story for her. “I had to move so quickly, you know, and I can’t really afford to stay in a hotel for too long.”

“That’s okay.” The brunette leading the way through a pretty courtyard looked more like a model than a doctor, but Sarah had read her file on the plane, and she knew exactly what sort of intelligence was hiding behind those good looks. Apparently, being scarily smart was something Chuck shared with his older sister. The resemblance was even stronger in person, Sarah couldn’t help but think, but she doubted that she would have recognized Dr. Ellie Bartowski without Chuck showing her a photograph. “I was supposed to have a shift, but another doctor needed tomorrow off, so I swapped. Good thing, too. The apartment’s this way.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said.

“My last roommate just moved out, and she really had no time to clean up after herself. She took a job on the east coast, job of a lifetime sort of thing, but they needed her there ASAP,” Ellie said as she dug in her purse. She’d met Sarah at the curb, and it looked like she had returned from shopping of some type. “So it’s a bit of a wreck.”

“That’s no problem.”

“So what is it you do, again?”

“I’m an actress,” Sarah lied without hesitation. She’d used the excuse on a couple of different covers, and thankfully, she had the face to back it up. “Out of work, of course, but I’ve got some savings and I’m actively looking for any type of work, not just acting, I promise. My credit’s really great; I made sure to build it up back in Boise.”

“Boise, huh? Idaho?” Ellie found her keys in her purse and unlocked the door.

“The gem state, yep. It’s home.”

“Do you ski at all?”

“Sure, I used to hit up Sun Valley with my brothers.”

She saw the way Ellie paused, the door halfway open, and immediately wanted to kick herself. Chuck’s sister had never been told anything about his whereabouts, so the subject of brothers was not really something Sarah wanted to broach with Ellie _._  Even though Chuck would be there within two weeks, she didn’t enjoy twisting the knife.

_I don’t know what the government told her when they stashed me away. I haven’t talked to her in five years. I…occasionally used satellites to, you know, check up on her, make sure she’s okay._

Chuck’s words from the beach, as he had showed her his picture, echoed back through Sarah’s head. She took a deep breath before she followed Ellie inside. The apartment was spacious and cheerful, made colorful thanks to southwestern-style tiles decorating the walls and archways, and light-colored floors. Sarah took all of this in while she forced herself to seem like any normal person apartment-hunting. “You’re a doctor, right? I think that’s what you told me on the phone?”

“That’s right. I work over at Madison Mercy. My boyfriend works there, too—what about you? Any boyfriend?”

“No, not even a goldfish. There was a guy, but...” Her last boyfriend, if he could be called that, had been Bryce. And that went beyond thorny, so she gave Ellie her best bright smile. “Just me for now, I’m afraid.”

“It’s a good thing you’re moving to L.A. Plenty of hot men around.” Ellie grinned. “I’m taken, but that doesn’t mean I can’t look. Anyway, this is the living room. If you’ve got any furniture you want to move in here, I’m more than happy to move stuff around. It’s been awhile since I’ve gotten the chance to redecorate.”

“Unfortunately, I didn’t bring much with me.”

“Hey, that’s okay, too. Um, through here’s the kitchen. Fridge is open territory. I like to cook and I don’t mind splitting grocery duties or going about that separately, whatever you’re more comfortable with. I keep a list here.” Ellie pointed to the list, which was exactly where Sarah would have expected a grocery list to be in the kitchen. Apparently Chuck’s neatness might not have been a result of the bunker. “Bathroom’s back this way, I’ve got a separate tub and a standing shower. The pipes are kind of old so it takes awhile to heat up, but we had the water heater replaced last year, so you never have to worry about cold showers. I don’t have a cleaning service, sorry. I figured we’d take turns cleaning.”

“Fine by me. I can’t really afford a maid anyway.”

“And this would be your room,” Ellie said, continuing the tour. “Like I said, I’m sorry it’s a wreck. I promise that if you move in, it won’t look anything like this. It does come with the furnishings.”

“Half the appeal,” Sarah said. “I don’t really have a lot. Just some clothes and my car and stuff.”

“Okay, good. All of the furniture used to belong to my brother, but...” Ellie trailed off with a half-shrug, an action Sarah recognized from a male counterpart, and pushed the door open. “Well, either way, it was his room.”

“Oh.” She schooled her features as she walked into the room. It was ironic that she was asking Ellie about Chuck, she couldn’t help but think, as she knew more about his present whereabouts than the other woman did. “He moved out?”

“You could say that. He went missing five years ago.”

Sarah whirled. “Oh, my God. I am so sorry!” She hated herself for the deception, but it would only be a couple of weeks. And she had a job to do here.

Ellie shook her head. “I’ve made my peace with it. What do you think of the room?”

Looking at it objectively, it was a nice room, though she could understand why Ellie had called it a wreck. Her previous roommate had obviously left in a hurry, as the room needed to be swept, and there were thumbtacks in all of the walls, and trash piled up in the corner. She looked beyond that: the walls were a peaceful sort of blue, there was a stone hearth in the corner (though the ad said the fireplace was for show only), and the closet space was pretty nice. She turned and raised an eyebrow. “Uh, what’s TRON?”

“Oh, that—I’m sorry. It belonged to my brother, and you’re free to take it down if you take the room. I just, I used to tease him about having such a geeky poster on his wall, and now that he’s gone, I can’t seem to take it down.” Ellie ran a hand over the edge of the poster hanging by the door.

“You were close,” Sarah said, needlessly.

“We were, but I should probably stop depressing you now. Do you want to see anything else? We’ve got a patio space out back, do you want to see that?”

“Sure,” Sarah said, if only to get away from so many reminders of Chuck. When Graham and Beckman had told her the night before she would be coming to Burbank to set up the first wave of Operation Prometheus, and that she would do everything she could to install herself as Ellie Bartowski’s roommate, she’d had no idea it would come to this. Not only would she be living with Chuck’s sister, but apparently she would be sleeping in his old room as well.

And in two weeks, she would see him again.

“So I called the references you gave me after I talked to you,” Ellie said as she led the way to the back patio. “They spoke very highly of you.”

“I’m pretty likeable,” Sarah said, though she had no idea if that was true or not. “And I never really seemed to have problems with any of my previous roommates. I didn’t understand the point of fighting about it, you know?”

“Oh trust me, I know. I almost wasn’t going to take on a new roommate, but I’m not quite at the place where I’m comfortable living with my boyfriend all the time, even though we see each other at work and he’s over a lot. That’s okay with you?”

“Perfectly fine by me.” According to the little information she’d been handed on Ellie Bartowski, the other woman was involved in an on-again-off-again relationship with another doctor, Devon Woodcomb. They had been together when Chuck had left for Army training.

After Ellie showed her the patio, they sat at the kitchen island with glasses of iced tea, and Ellie looked at her frankly. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask. You’re not an axe murderer or anything, are you?”

“I’m not an axe murderer,” Sarah said. At least, she didn’t think she’d killed anybody with an axe before. Possibly a hatchet once, but she had heard later that the guy had made it. She gave Ellie a worried look over her tea. “Why? I’m not giving off axe murderer vibes, am I?”

“No, I just had to check the one last detail. Well, your references check out, and if you’ve got the security deposit and the rent, and you still want the room, it’s yours. I’ve got no problems with you moving in as soon as you’re ready.”

“All because I’m not an axe murderer?”

“I’ve got to have standards. And you’re the first response I’ve had to the ad who wasn’t a meth addict or allergic to showering.”

Well, that eradicated the ever-pressing worry that she smelled like an airport. She’d been given one night of patchy sleep in her own apartment before she had hopped the first flight to Los Angeles that morning. Sarah kept her nerves and fatigue out of her smile as she raised her glass and sipped. “I definitely want the room. I can’t believe I found the perfect place on the first try. My girlfriends back in Boise warned me that it might be months and I might have to live in some rat-hole.”

Ellie smiled and raised her glass in salute. “Must be fate.”

Must be something, Sarah echoed silently. She’d hardly call it fate, though, not with the government playing such a heavy hand in everything. What it was, she couldn’t say, but after spending a week on the run, three days in a cell, and two days hearing everything she had ever done weighed and judged by bureaucrats, she knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. For some reason, fate, destiny, the government, whatever the hell it was, had seen fit to grant her more time with Chuck, and to grant Chuck a new beginning with the same sister that still thought he was missing.

And Sarah wasn’t going to let fate screw any of it up. Not if she had a damn thing to say about it.

  
**Fin**   



End file.
